


(good things come)

by dzzyondreams



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Angst, Community: polybigbang, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-08 01:34:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 46,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3190862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dzzyondreams/pseuds/dzzyondreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time it happens, it could be an accident; anything more than that is a pattern.  But Patrick keeps accepting Pete's offers to hook up with people until it becomes something they do.  The only problem is that he doesn't know what, exactly, they're doing. </p><p>Written for polybigbang 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(good things come)

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoy this fic, please check out [melusina](http://archiveofourown.org/users/melusina/pseuds/melusina)'s fabulous mix, [Keep You Like an Oath](http://8tracks.com/fabusina/keep-you-like-an-oath). You can listen on [8tracks](http://8tracks.com/fabusina/keep-you-like-an-oath) or snag a [download](http://www.mediafire.com/view/97vzwscv9873hfp/Keep_You_Like_an_Oath.zip). 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who helped me get this fic from my brain to the page - Mel, with her awesome mix and encouraging words; Julie, for telling me that more makeouts is never a bad idea; Sane, for yelling at me to write, dammit; and Jen, for a) giving me the idea for this fic and then b) helping me whip this whole thing into shape once I got it written - what is pacing? We might know a little bit more now but it's still a nebulous abstraction at best.  
> Thanks also to the polybigbang mods for organizing this whole thing! You all are awesome!
> 
> Content warnings for references to brain junk and alcohol abuse.

“The girl I met thinks you’re totally hot,” Pete informs Patrick, appearing right as Patrick’s finishing up with his bass.  

“Great,” he says.  “Does this mean you’re going to be a jealous asshole for the next week?”  He wouldn’t put it beyond Pete, especially after the stop where Andy was the only one of them to get laid.  Andy’s the most peaceful person Patrick knew, and even he’d almost punched Pete.

“No,” says Pete.  “She thinks I’m hot too.  I’m just here because she told me she wanted to blow you.”  

“Mmm.”  Patrick considers the possibilities behind Pete telling him this.  “So she’s not hot enough for you, so you thought you’d pass her off to the second-best option?”

“Hey.”  Pete punches him in the arm.  “Don’t be a dick.”

“ _I’m_ not a dick,” Patrick says, because really, he just cleaned up everything of Pete’s while Pete was off trying to get laid.  It’s not even the first time this week that’s happened.

“She’s hot,” Pete assures him.  “She’s really hot, Patrick, why do you think I’m talking to you right now?”

“Not because you’re about to voluntarily sacrifice your sex life for mine,” says Patrick.  “What do you want, Pete?”

“I just.  Um.  Sort of promised her that you would agree when she said she wanted to blow you and then have me fuck her.”  Patrick has to slow the words down in his head for them to make any kind of sense, and even then it only half-works.

“What?”

“Patrick.  _Please_.”  Pete isn’t looking at him, quite.  “She’s really hot and she probably won’t sleep with me if I don’t get you there too and like.  You can get off first and then just ignore us.  And—and take that line you don’t like out of the song.”

Patrick considers.  They’ve still only gotten half of their stuff put away, and he feels bad leaving Joe and Andy to finish up.  On the other hand, he’s well past due his turn to sneak off and get laid while everyone else does the work.  It’s been too fucking long.

“Does she have a name?” he asks Pete.

“What?”

“Your girl, does she have a name?”

“Brenda,” says Pete.  “That’s a yes, right, that’s totally a yes.  Stump!  My man.  You are living the rockstar life.”  He puts an arm around Patrick’s shoulder like Patrick’s about to run away and steers him off the stage.  

Brenda is leaning against the wall by the exit and sipping from a beer.  It’s clear who she is by the cool smile she gives them.  Pete’s right, she is hot; not in a Halle Berry way, maybe, but her hair is a dark pinkish-purple and she has a row of piercings up her ear and she smiles at Pete like she’s going to eat him up, which is generally good for Pete’s ego.  Good in the way where it makes him less obnoxious.

“Look what I brought you,” says Pete, nudging Patrick forward.  

“Hey.” Patrick’s not quite sure of the etiquette in this situation, but he guesses that handshakes might not be called for.  “You’re Brenda?”

“That’s me,” she says.  “Hey, you were awesome out there tonight.”

“Thanks.” Patrick keeps a mental record each show of how many notes he misses and how many lines he flubbed.  The number tonight is higher than last.  

“He’s too modest,” says Pete, slipping an arm around Patrick again.  “You can tell him he’s amazing, like, all night and he won’t believe you still.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t try.”  Brenda smiles, sure of herself.  “Wanna come to my place?  I have an amazing bed and I can give you leftover pizza for breakfast.”  

“Done.”  Pete gives Patrick a little shove as Brenda leads them out of the place and they follow her to a cute Kia with peeling paint the color of Pete’s hoodie.  Patrick expects Pete to call shotgun and make a leap for it the way he always does, but he just pushes Patrick toward the front door and ducks into the back, scooting up so he can rest his head on the back of Patrick’s seat.  Patrick can’t think of anything to say; he doesn’t even know quite what one should say in this situation, so he’s glad when Pete jumps in with something inane and ridiculous.  It’s just so normal—so _Pete_ —that he feels himself relax.  Talking is easier when he doesn’t look at Brenda because when he does he knows that she’s listening intently like she can somehow learn something about him from their easy banter.  Patrick’s not used to that sort of attention.  “Aw, you’re so shy,” Pete says, the fourth or fifth time Patrick finds himself blushing and stuttering his way through an answer to one of her questions.

“That’s fine,” says Brenda, pulling into her parking space and smiling like she finds it cute instead of off-putting.  “Sorry.”  

Patrick offers her a weak smile which she return before she gets out of her car.  “You’ll have to slam that one hard or it won’t lock,” she says to Pete.  

A sidewalk leads them through dying grass to her first-floor apartment, the sort of place that’s a step up from what they’d had when they had no money but a step down from the kind of apartments people like to parade around as their own.  The inside is modest but homey and well-kept.  It’s also filled with books, which Pete will probably try to talk about, and a little dog, which Pete bends over to greet when it jumps up his shins.  

“ _Down_ , Trebel—sorry,” Brenda says.  “I’m still trying to train her.”  

Patrick looks at Pete, who’s bent down to scratch between its ears with one hand while it licks the other.  “I think you’re probably okay.”  Brenda looks at Pete like she doesn’t quite know what to make of him, this guy who’s gone from screaming into a microphone and jumping off the stage to letting a puppy lick his nose.  “Pete’s just…”

“I can put her out if you need me to.”  

Pete rubs Treble’s belly and the speed of her tail increases.  “No, don’t,” he says.  “Pete can catch up to us later.”  Because he’s clearly enjoying himself right now, but Patrick doesn’t want to wait any longer.

“Okay.”  Brenda takes his hand.  “Do you want me to give you a tour of the place first or do you wanna just…”

“Yes, let’s,” says Patrick, trying to figure out the best place to do this, “Can I?”  Brenda doesn’t bother leading him to the bedroom, she just leans in right there and kisses him.  Patrick tries to not seem to desperate but, well, he is; he moans a little into her kiss and backs her into the wall so he can touch her properly.  It’s likely she’s taller than him even without heels but for now that’s his excuse and it’s okay, it’s pretty fucking hot, really, because the look Patrick saw on her face earlier means she could probably throw him into the next century if need be but instead she’s here with him letting him touch her and touching him back and that.  That is a goddamned fucking miracle.

It’s only when Patrick moves his lips down to her neck and sucks a mark there that she grabs his arm.  “Wait.”  

Patrick pulls back, afraid he’s crossed some sort of line.   

“We should maybe move this to bed,” she says.  “I, we’ll need it by the end, c’mon.”  

Patrick steps back, his dick already missing the warm pressure of her thigh, and lets her lead the way down the hall.  That’s where Pete catches up to them, ruffling Patrick’s hair and sliding an arm around Brenda.  “Oh good, you made it,” she says.  “I’m going to have a lot of fun with you.”  

Pete’s the first on the bed and the first out of his pants; Patrick can see the outline of Pete’s dick through his boxers and it’s not so weird, really.  Not as weird as he anticipated it would be.  It’s actually kind of funny for some reason; and that fact makes him less self-conscious when he pops the button on his jeans and kicks them off.  Pete’s so focused on Brenda that Patrick doesn’t think he even notices.  Which is just as well—they’re both here for her, and Patrick doesn’t want to look anywhere else once she lets him pull her shirt over her head and unlatch her bra.  Brenda makes the most wonderful noises when Patrick mouths at her breasts and he takes his time exploring her body, figuring out what she likes.  He can feel Pete’s eyes on them but it doesn’t feel like impatience.  It’s more like he’s just enjoying the show.  

Patrick, determined to make this as good as possible for everyone involved, pops the button on Brenda’s jeans and slides them off.  Her underwear follow suit.  “Can I?” Patrick asks, resituating himself between her legs and pressing her back against the mattress.  

“Oh,” says Brenda, as his lips graze her hipbone.  “Oh, fuck.  Yeah.”  

Patrick puts a hand on her hip to steady them both as he goes down.  “Fuck,” she gasps; Patrick can feel the muscles in her thigh twitching as he traces her clit with his tongue. “Oh, god, Patrick, Patrick, please.”  Patrick licks and sucks and fingers her until she’s falling apart beneath him, and when he looks up he sees Pete’s mouth on one of Brenda’s breasts, her hand locked in the hair at the base of his skull.  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she chants as she falls apart; when Patrick finally pulls back, he has an odd urge to give Pete a high five or something.  Like, _look what we did, aren’t we awesome_?  Instead, he pulls back so she can roll over and kiss Pete as his fingers trace every inch of skin she has to offer.

For some reason, even though he’s dying to get off, Patrick is content to settle in behind her and kiss the back of her neck, caress her waist and hips and the swell of her ass while he waits.  It could be simply because after so long of getting himself off he finally has the promise of having someone else along for the ride; it could be because right now she’s with Pete and he doesn’t want to take away from that.  After all, Pete could have come alone and gotten this all for himself.  Patrick is going to have to thank him sometime.  

“Hey,” says Brenda, lacing her fingers through Patrick’s s.  “Can I get you out of this?”  She doesn’t have to ask twice: Patrick pulls his shirt off and chucks it to the side.  

“Good,” Brenda says.  She crawls half on his lap to make out with him and Patrick groans at the pressure of her against his cock.  He could drill a goddamn board with it right now and really, if she wants to blow him, she should probably get on that before he comes in his pants.  After what seems like forever, Brenda pushes him back against the pillows and bends down to take him into her mouth.  She’s at the same time perfect and not quite enough; Patrick moans louder than he meant to and tries not to fuck into her mouth.  One of Brenda’s hands comes to rest on Patrick’s hip in what probably is meant to be a comforting manner before she takes him in further.  “Shit,” says Patrick, “shit, fuck, ah, _shit_.”  

Patrick knows it’s good because he can see Pete jerking himself off out of the corner of his eye, can hear the sound of him slow fucking his hand as well as the little grunts and hitches of breath he can’t keep silent.  It’s nothing Patrick hasn’t heard it before; hell, he’s seen Pete’s dick more than once, but it settles more heavily into his stomach with Pete’s eyes are locked on him.  Patrick himself is about to lose it.  His hands are flexing against Brenda’s sheets as he searches for something to ground himself.  

When Pete reaches out with his free hand Patrick doesn’t think twice before grabbing on.  Pete squeezes back right as Brenda slides down on Patrick’s cock again and Patrick’s skin practically lights on fire.  “Brenda, gonna—gonna come—“ he chokes out, and he squeezes down on Pete’s fingers as Brenda licks him through it.

He pulls Brenda up and kisses her until Pete gets too grabby from behind.  “Gotta,” says Brenda, in between kisses, “Pete, hang on, gotta—“  Her nails match her hair, though they look more black when she rests them on Pete’s shoulder to press him into the bed.  Pete’s already gasping and sweaty—the sweat is new, Patrick notes; even hot stages don’t usually get him the way they do Patrick—and Brenda grins down at Pete as she positions herself over him.

Patrick was so right about this being good for Pete’s ego.

“Fuck me good, yeah,” says Brenda as she slides down onto Pete’s cock.  If this were anything else Pete would probably be pissed by the way her fingers are crimping his hair.  Instead, he throws his head back and fucks up right as she drops back down onto him.  Patrick’s fascinated by the way Pete’s fingers sneak up to play around her clit and for a brief moment he feels like he should slide over and help, like Pete helped him; maybe add his tongue to the mix again since it worked so well last time.  

He doesn’t need to: Brenda’s damn near incoherent by the time she comes, but she yells a bit, which, _oh_.  Patrick could be persuaded to go again if she wanted.  

She loses all rhythm after that, riding Pete hard and fast and it doesn’t take long until Pete’s hips snap up into her and he makes a high keening sound.  

If Pete thought all he was getting out of this was sex, he was wrong; Patrick is going to make fun of him forever for the face he makes when he comes.  

Brenda rides out Pete’s orgasm and then rolls off him.  Patrick samples the sweat on one of her breasts and she just sighs, rests a hand on his shoulders.  “God,” she says, “oh god, don’t tempt me, I don’t think I could go again.”  

Patrick hums into her chest and sucks a mark there, just so she can remember them the next day.  He meets Pete’s eyes and thinks, _one of us should say something_.  He can’t for the life of him figure out what.

“Do you two do this all the time?” asks Brenda.

“Yeah,” says Pete and hey, Patrick’s not gonna be an ass and correct him.  “You know, kind of everyone wants to sleep with Patrick, so if I want to get some too…”  

On the other hand, Patrick might not even have to call Pete out on his lie.

“Oh, yeah,” she says, like that makes any sense at all.  “No wonder you two didn’t get all awkward.”

 _Give it time_ , Patrick might say, but it’s more tempting right now to just draw lazy patterns across Brenda’s breasts and stomach until he falls asleep.

 

+

 

It doesn’t get awkward.  Out of everything, that’s might be what surprises Patrick most.  He expects Pete to shy away from him the next day, to make some not-so-funny joke about the whole thing and then never mention it again, but that doesn’t happen.  When Brenda drops them off, Pete waves goodbye to her and then jumps on Patrick and demands a piggyback because he’s too tired to walk.  Patrick shakes him off and calls him an asshole and laughs when Pete pouts, then helps him up and they get on their way.  And that’s that.  Pete doesn’t mention it again, but he also doesn’t stop handing Patrick lyrics scribbled on takeout wrappers, or owning him in video games, or crawling into Patrick’s bunk when he can’t sleep.  “Could you _be_ any more obvious,” Patrick asks him once, when he gets half a page of lyrics that are too obviously about the night they spent with Brenda; Pete shrugs and says, “it was a good time.”  

It was, and Patrick figures maybe they’ll put a verse of it somewhere in one of their songs, the real night subsumed by a fond memory of that _one time when we…_   He’s gotten perfectly comfortable of thinking of things in the past tense when Pete comes up to him backstage, a few weeks later, and says, “Hey Patrick, there’s this girl, I think you’ll like her, do you wanna?” and Patrick follows.

That’s why it never gets awkward, maybe; because Patrick keeps saying yes.

It’s not like it’s a thing that happens all the time.  It’s not regular, or even frequent enough that Patrick thinks it’s a pattern.  Just sometimes, when they’re both single and it’s been awhile and Pete stumbles across somebody who is for some reason interested in sleeping not only with Pete, but with Patrick as well.

Patrick doesn’t know how Pete seals that deal, but he doesn’t want to draw attention to it by asking.  It’s probably just part of his indubitable Wentz charm, the part that can get anybody to say yes to anything—and hey, it’s not like Patrick thinks Pete wants to be there when Patrick gets off, but more that he wants Patrick to be able to get off and he’s put two and two together and figured out that Patrick sure as hell isn’t willing to pick up groupies on his own so Pete will have to do it for him.  It’s exactly the kind of move Pete likes to pull, the thing that makes him not only an asshole but also Patrick’s asshole best friend, and Patrick doesn’t want to seem ungrateful.  

The sex isn’t bad, for what it is.  Patrick’s not usually the type of guy who likes taking his clothes off around people he doesn’t know—or people he does know, really—but somehow with Pete there it always seems all right.  And Pete—Pete’s good about it.  Patrick hadn’t known what to expect there because, well, he’d never slept with Pete, but Pete doesn’t look at him any differently after.  Patrick has seen the guys that Pete fucks and then forgets to call the next morning and the ones Pete sleeps with and writes poems about and calls too much, but Pete doesn’t treat Patrick like either of those.  He still looks like Patrick like he’s the golden ticket that makes their band work, and keeps him up until 5 a.m. rambling about things that only make half-sense by the time they make it out of his mouth, and laughs obnoxiously when Patrick pops an inappropriate boner during a radio interview where the host is unfairly hot.  He really is still just Patrick’s asshole best friend, but he’s also the guy who hooks Patrick up with groupies and then helps Patrick get them off.  He’s the guy whose hand Patrick held once during a really fucking good blow job and if Patrick thinks of that sometimes when Pete’s sitting too close and lacing his fingers through Patrick’s because he’s having a bad day, there are a lot of worse associations he could make.

 

+

 

It’s not like Patrick doesn’t know that Pete sleeps with guys, but Pete doesn’t know that Patrick has slept with guys and Patrick kind of expects him to go on not knowing unless there’s a time when he needs to know.  He doesn’t expect it to come up, really, so he’s thrown for a loop the night that Pete comes up to him after their show and tugs him further backstage with a frantic sort of look in his eye.  

“Dude, what,” says Patrick, shrugging Pete off because it’s too fucking hot to have anyone touch him without a very good reason for it.

Pete just grabs his arm again and doesn’t say anything until they’re at least five doorways down from the dressing room and the rest of the backstage activity.

“So, uh,” says Pete.

Patrick finally manages to wrench his arm free for good.  The brutalist cinderblock walls aren’t very comfortable to lean against but it beats the alternative because Patrick is tired and thirsty and more than a little upset that Pete is robbing him of the conversation he was going to pick up with their sound tech about seventies punk.  The guy is very informed, if a little wrong.  

Pete knows none of this, so it’s not really his fault that Patrick’s mad.  It is his fault that he won’t tell Patrick what’s going on—and Patrick has a sudden sinking feeling in his chest as he starts running through all the people he might have to call and the timezones they’re in.

“ _What_ ,” he says, when Pete isn’t more forthcoming.  “Pete, spit it out.”

“I.”  Pete won’t look at Patrick, even after he starts speaking.  “I know you’re not really into it but Patrick there’s this guy and he, just let him get you off okay, it won’t feel any different, I’ll take care of him.”

Patrick runs a quick mental calculus: conversations about Bowie followed by lousy motel showers versus sex, possible decent showers, and maybe even a comfortable bed.  “That’s why you dragged me back here?”  

“It doesn’t have to be weird,” Pete says.  “Patrick, c’mon—“

“Don’t make it weird, then,” says Patrick, re-orienting himself so he can find the backstage entrance.  Pete doesn’t follow.  “Aren’t you coming?”

“Oh,” says Pete, who doesn’t seem to be firing on all cylinders yet.  Patrick isn’t sure if he just came out to Pete or if Pete just thinks he’s kind of desperate.  Both are true.  “Yeah, hey, let’s go.”  They’re halfway down the hall when Pete says, “So I didn’t know what to tell him but he kind of assumes that since we’ve done this before we’re both, you know.”  Apparently Patrick didn’t just come out to him, then.

“Well I have, _you know_ , been in a bed with you,” says Patrick.  “More than once, even.”  

“Kinda different,” says Pete, though Patrick doesn’t see how it would be.  “Just, you know, don’t freak out.”  

“I think I’m past that stage,” says Patrick, and Pete finally drops the issue.

The guy looks a little less like what Pete would normally sleep with, a little more like what Patrick would normally sleep with (not that Pete would know), and he offers Patrick a water as soon as he’s offstage.

“Thanks,” says Patrick, twisting the cap.  As introductions go, he’s had many worse.  

“Yeah.”  The guy grins.  “Stefan.  I have a couple of bands I sing with sometimes, I know how hot it gets up there.”

“Yeah?” says Patrick.  “Tell me more.”  It’s not hard to figure out why Pete likes this one.  If they weren’t in the middle of a tour Patrick would even slot him down as a _maybe_ and make sure they exchanged numbers before the night was out.  Stefan looks good even in the bleak imitation-daytime lighting on the light rail; Patrick knows he must look washed out and sweaty as hell and spends the ride staring out the windows in lieu of making eye contact.  Every once in awhile, the glass will flash him a reflection of Pete.  Patrick looks away from those, too.

“You okay, man?” Stefan asks as they step off the platform onto a much darker street.  “If you’re not feelin it that’s cool, you can still crash on my couch and I’ll make you pancakes tomorrow.”

“No, I.”  Patrick has to say something to keep Pete from jumping in, judging by that worried look on Pete’s face.  “I’m just, are you sure _you_ still want…?”

“Dude.”  Stefan puts an arm around him.  “I had your whole set to make up my mind, okay?”  

“Sure,” says Patrick, “but I was, like, I was up there, yeah?”

It’s hot out still; he tries to surreptitiously wipe over his brow.  Maybe he should have forgone the hat.

“Mmm, and then things got better.”  Stefan digs through his pocket with his other hand and pulls out his keys.  “If you wanna clean up first, I think my shower could fit three.”  He pushes open the door and ushers them both in.  

“Thank fuck,” Patrick says, as soon as the door has shut behind them.  “I mean—yeah, that would be great.”  

“Yeah?” Stefan’s grin is blinding as he moves in.  He tastes like pot and beer and something tangy-sweet that Patrick can’t identify.  He kisses like it’s his job.  Patrick really wishes they weren’t in the middle of Kansas.

They end up shedding their clothes as they move down the hallway, and Patrick takes a good few moments to admire the lines of ink edging their way up Stefan’s chest, the contrast of dark-against-darker in the shadowed hall sending a thrill up his chest.

“My sister’s a tattooist,” Stefan fills in when he notices Patrick staring.  “Best one in town.  You ever want some ink, she’ll fix you up right.”

Pete holds up an arm speculatively.  “You should give me her card.”  

The shower, when they make it, has perfect water pressure and Patrick could be happy just with that.  It’s even better with Stefan’s hands on him, shampooing him up and then rinsing him off only to lather up the rest of him.

“Gonna make you feel good,” Stefan says, “then gonna make you feel _good_ , you hear?”

“Yeah,” says Patrick.  “Yeah, okay, not complaining.”  He’s even okay with the fact that Stefan takes a break midway through to steal a few sloppy kisses from Pete.  The best part, though, is when Stefan comes back and sinks down in front of him and gives him about the best head he’s ever had.  Stefan guides one of Patrick’s hands to his head and Patrick rests it on the quarter-inch of hair Stefan has and very vocally appreciates his talents.  Stefan just takes it when Patrick comes and then mouths at the inside of Patrick’s thighs, panting a bit.  Patrick doesn’t mind the marks he leaves.  This isn’t a night he wants to forget.  

Eventually Patrick pulls him to his feet because he needs to have more; he would be happy to make out with Stefan until the shower ran cold, giving him light teasing touches just to feel each new way he reacted.  He would, maybe, just keep going until Stefan begged and then jerk him off hard and quick but Pete’s pulling at them and saying “want you to fuck me, will you?” so it’s only fair for Patrick to let him go.

“Yes,” says Stefan, “yes, let me—hang on—“ he struggles with the shower curtain as he leaves and Patrick is suddenly aware of how little space the shower has.  It’s hard not to focus on Pete’s dick, still curling upward toward his belly, and Patrick wonders what it would taste like.  Which, it’s not like he hasn’t done that sort of thing with the rest of the guys at some point.  The difference is that with Pete, he actually knows most of the answers.  

Pete’s attempt at a wink is enough to make Patrick stop thinking on it too hard.  He rolls his eyes in return as Stefan ducks back into the shower with a condom on his dick.  “Can’t do it with you just standing there, now,” he says, nudging Pete.

Nearly all of their friendship has been centered on Pete and Patrick leaning on each other when they needed it, so Patrick doesn’t think twice before reaching out for Pete.  The second after he’s done it, his brain starts working enough to be surprised that Pete doesn’t miss the cue or brush it off.  That Pete leans into him and grabs as Stefan opens him up.  Patrick’s neck becomes party to all Pete’s huffs and gasps; once or twice he swears he feels teeth, but he could be imagining it.  

Pete whines into Patrick’s neck when Stefan enters him and that time there definitely is a hint of teeth.  Patrick is going to kill Pete if he leaves a mark.  Pete doesn’t have much control at the best of times—and at this particular moment he’s buried his face in Patrick’s neck and he keeps making these little _noises_ every time Stefan thrusts. 

It’s about the oddest feeling Patrick’s ever experienced, both a part of the sex and removed, but he still sucks in his breath when Pete’s come splatters his thigh.  Or maybe it’s because of the teeth; someone’s definitely going to notice that tomorrow.  He intends to give Pete shit about it because he can—or maybe because he _would_ , if this were anything else—but Pete just leans heavier into him as Stefan grunts out his orgasm and stays there, draped over Patrick, as he catches his breath and gasps out a few hundred thank yous.  One of his hands is playing with Patrick’s hair.  _Surreal_ is the word Patrick best thinks describes the experience.

“Stand up, you asshole,” he says at last, because Pete shows no signs of moving.  Patrick would like to see if his window for making out with Stefan has closed or not.  Pete’s a little in the way.

Pete whimpers into his neck again and isn’t that quite the change of circumstances.

“C’mon, up,” Patrick insists.  “You’re no the only one who just got off, and some of us…”  

Pete yawns in Patrick’s face as he straightens up.  Pete grabs on to the arm that Stefan proffers and clings there instead.  His heat gone, Patrick shivers; the water’s getting cold.  “

‘M tired,” says Pete.  “That’s good.”

Patrick’s been wishing Pete could get some sleep for the past three days.  He would’ve rather this happened on the bus.

“Tired you out, huh?” says Stefan, with an expression that looks a lot like pride.  “You need to crash? Here, just—“

Patrick switches off the water and accepts a towel from Stefan.  He always hates putting on dirty clothes after a shower, but bringing clean ones would’ve been tacky.  When he retrieves his shirt from the floor, it smells like sweat and smoke and too long on the bus.  The inescapable perfume of tour.

“You don’t have to,” Stefan offers.  Patrick shrugs and pulls it on anyway.

“’S gonna,” says Pete, who’s gotten his towel around his head.  Patrick makes a note to take pictures of his hair tomorrow, before he gets it all fixed up.

“Let me at least find something for you,” says Stefan.  

Patrick hopes his facial expression can convey his disbelief that Stefan has anything that would fit him lying around.

“No, I got some stuff, old friend’s,” says Stefan.  “You can’t sleep in that, man.”  

Patrick would rather not, truth be told, but he stays in it all the same until Stefan comes back and tosses a Sooners shirt at Patrick.

“Your school?” Patrick asks.  Stefan looks approximately old enough to have made it through college.

“His,” says Stefan.  “Kinda the reason it didn’t work out.”  

Patrick nods and trades his shirt for the tee, which settles worn and soft over his shoulders.

“We can throw your clothes in the wash if you want,” says Stefan. “Dry ‘em during breakfast tomorrow?”

Patrick picks up their clothes as Stefan leads him down the hallway and and to a washing machine.  Load started, he turns back down the hall to find Pete waiting dazedly.  “Bedroom’s on your right,” says Stefan, so Patrick grabs Pete’s arm in an attempt at keeping him anchored and drags him there.

Pete falls asleep almost as soon as he’s in the bed proper; Patrick wrestles an extra pillow from him and makes himself comfortable.  He’s comfortably sleepy, but he also doesn’t want to miss out on the rest of this night.  Especially not when he finds it so easy to talk to Stefan—they cover everything, music to politics to family to weird friend stories to relationships and back to music again—before Patrick can’t keep his eyes open anymore.  Stefan gives him one last goodnight kiss when his eyes drop shut and Patrick smiles into it.  

“Hey,” says Stefan the next morning, when Pete is alternating between complaining about his hair and trying to fix it in the mirror, “thanks for everything.”

“You too,” says Patrick.  “Last night was—you were—I had a great time.”

“Yeah, and you’ll find someone better at the next stop.” Stefan’s grin is so easy that Patrick feels things ought to be easy for them, too.

Patrick shakes his head.  “I don’t usually—“ He takes a moment to figure out how to put it.  “It’s not like I hook up all the time, yeah?  And even—you were something else.”  

“ _You’re_ something else, Patrick Stump,” Stefan says.  He grabs a pen off the table and scrawls ten digits on Patrick’s hand.  “I’m not saying you have to call me, okay?  But if you ever want to remember.  I do too.”  

Patrick pulls him down for a kiss, fully aware that this will be their last.  “If we’re ever in Kansas again,” he says anyway.

“Yeah, you two look me up.”  

Pete sulks out in his hoodie, eyes only lighting up when he sees Stefan.  “Hey,” he says.  “So, hey, you were great.”  His kiss is much more aggressive than Patrick’s and Patrick thinks he gets in a grope or two before they break apart.  “Call me,” he says.  “I gave you my number, call me.  Or text.”

Patrick almost feels like he has a hangover when they bow out into the bright morning light.  He hates morning bus calls, but that’s about the only kind they ever have.  They say goodbye again at the rail station, this time with hugs to avoid suspicion, and Patrick sinks down onto one of the hard plastic chairs once the doors have closed between them and Stefan.  Pete stands so their toes are nearly touching.

“Hey.”  Pete kicks at Patrick’s feet, like Patrick would be paying attention to the absolutely nothing else in the twenty-foot car.  “Hey, not so bad, right?”

Patrick’s hand curls protectively as if to hide the number that Stefan gave him.  He doesn’t have to fake his smile.  “Better, even.” 

 

+

 

Whenever Pete disappears alone after a show, everyone assumes he’s getting laid.  Whenever Pete disappears with Patrick after a show, everyone just assumes they’re off doing a _them_ thing. And—it is a _them_ thing, Patrick supposes, though not the kind of thing anyone would ever suspect.  Sure, Pete kisses Patrick onstage and practically sits in his lap during movie nights and crawls into Patrick’s bed to bother him (when he can’t sleep) or to grind against him during dreams (when he can), but that’s it.  

That’s it to everyone else, at least; Patrick has an extensive (and secret) mental catalogue of Pete-when-he’s-turned-on and Pete-when-he’s-trying-not-to-be-turned-on and oh-will-you-look-at-that-I-have-Pete’s-come-on-me-again.  He guesses Pete does too (at least passively; he tends to be less for the obsessive categorizing and more for the conceptual abstractions).  It would be weird to ask, though, so Patrick doesn’t.

He also doesn’t ask if Pete tells other people.  Patrick doesn’t because he doesn’t talk about his sex life in general, but for someone like Pete who sleeps with a lot more people he can see how it might come up with whatever boyfriend or girlfriend he’s picked up.  Just a quick, oh, and I’ve been in a few threesomes with my best friend, it was okay, you know, but I’d rather be with _you_ and then the moment is forgotten about.

Patrick hopes.  He doesn’t want anything about them splashed all over the tabloids just because Pete told, and then pissed off, the wrong person.  It would be a good idea to talk about this at some point.

Since Pete never mentions it, Patrick doesn’t either.  Pete is good at bringing up things he wants to discuss and just as good at avoiding things he doesn’t.  And it’s not like Patrick can ambush Pete while he’s waiting for his Starbucks order with a “hey, so I kind of like to keep my personal life quiet so you haven’t told anyone about those threesomes we had, right?”  He can’t do it when they’re alone, because Pete will distract him or change the subject or leave.  He can’t do it via text because Pete will make a joke out of it.  If he sends an email Pete will delete it, and if he brings it up during a phone conversation, Pete will develop a sudden problem with his signal.  These are all tried-and-true Pete Wentz methods of avoiding things, and Patrick knows better than to push when Pete pulls them out.  

Pete probably isn’t talking about it with other people either, though.  He should know better.

(Pete does a lot of things that he should know better than to do, but Patrick keeps letting him, and maybe that’s more of the problem than anything.)

The problem isn’t entirely with Pete not talking, because someone else might be able to handle the situation.  But until this thing with Pete started it’d been months since Patrick actually properly gotten laid.  Years since he’d gotten in bed with another guy.  So even though Pete doesn’t pull Patrick along on anywhere close to every stop, this whole thing is kind of new to Patrick.  Kind of new, and kind of fast.  Patrick’s trying to catch up, which means he’s doing a lot of thinking.  He has charts and conjectures and theories all worked out in his head.  One of them is that he’s not very good at casual sex.

In some way, Patrick figures he’s known this before, because he didn’t seek it out.  There were other reasons, but they all seem a bit less important when someone else takes care of them for him.  The only thing left for him to dwell on is the sex part, and why it’s working even though it shouldn’t be.  For Pete, he knows, it’s easy to form connections that last one night and no longer, but without the something longer Patrick normally doesn’t feel anything.  So the only reason that he keeps saying yes and enjoying himself must have to do with the longer connection he has (Pete) but then his brain gets tangled up because it’s not like almost having sex has made Pete and Patrick closer.  They couldn’t be closer—which might be another knot to untie, Patrick doesn’t know.

All he’s managed to figure out on his own is that there is a problem, and it starts with Pete’s first proposition and extends to (but may not be contingent on) the sex they’re still almost-having on a semi-regular basis and usually, the person Patrick would go to when he needed help figuring something out is Pete and Pete can be damned if he doesn’t want to talk about it.

So of course that’s when Pete gets himself a girlfriend.

 

+

 

Ashlee is—okay, she’s great, despite all the things Patrick has said to Pete in an attempt to make him slow down for once before he gets himself into a horribly messy situation.  At first Patrick thinks Pete’s exaggerating when he brags about how awesome she is, but then she comes to visit and spends a whole three hours talking to Patrick about the roots of modern pop and doesn’t look bored once.   Patrick isn’t in love with her music like Pete is, but he’s heard it all enough that he can talk about that with her, and of course she’s listened to theirs as well, and before Patrick knows it it’s pushing midnight and Pete is pouting at him from the corner of the sofa.

“Stop stealing my girlfriend,” he says, and Ashlee turns around to reassure him she’s still his in a way that involves far too much tongue for them being in Patrick’s line of sight.  It culminates later with Pete eating her out in the bunks while Patrick tries to pretend he’s not getting off to it.  He gives up on that objective pretty quick because he’s seen Pete’s mouth and yeah, he’d probably be even louder than Ashlee is.

Patrick still wears noise-canceling headphones around Pete the whole next day because Pete finds the whole thing hilarious.  Ashlee has the grace to apologize and even brings Patrick food to make it up to him.  Patrick regrets every terrible thing he said about her (but not the things he’s said about Pete).  

It’s not until two weeks later when Patrick’s chatting with a girl who keeps talking about Pete (and Joe, and Andy) and dropping signals that Patrick looks around and then thinks oh, _right_ , because of course, they can’t do this anymore.

He’s not interested in hooking up with anyone on his own because it won’t be that great a time, so he manages to snag Andy for a quick introduction and then slinks away feeling that he’s done his good deed for the night.  It’s not until he’s in his (very clean, very comfortable, very empty) hotel room later that he thinks, _I could have not been alone tonight_ and then he’s mad at Pete for a moment before realizing that it’s not Pete’s fault, not really.  He forgets about her has he falls asleep and only remembers the next morning when Andy thanks him—but he’s too tired to devote any energy to anger, so he just lets it go.  

He doesn’t mention it to Pete at all, which might be what really shakes him about the episode.  

 

+

 

Between Pete’s constant stream of Ashlee-this and Ashlee-that and Ashlee’s actual visits, Patrick forgets that she doesn’t actually live with them. Coming home from tour is always wonderful in a sad sort of way, but this time Pete’s off in LA with his girlfriend and Patrick’s all the way back in Chicago and though Joe and Andy are there, it isn’t quite the same.

Patrick tries to keep busy.  He goes on a couple of dates with a girl he meets at a local show but he doesn’t really feel like he wants to kiss her, much less listen to her expound on facets of new-age spirituality through all of dinner, so he breaks it off.  He knows, logically, that going home alone isn’t really a change, but it still makes him moody.  When his clock ticks over from 1:41 to 1:42 and he can’t stop staring at it, he breaks down and calls Pete.  As Patrick expects, Pete picks up after the second ring, gives a hello, and then launches into a thirty-minute sharing session on everything they (read: Ashlee) has done since Patrick last called, four days ago.

“So, yeah, how are you?” Pete asks after.  

Patrick shifts the phone to his other ear and tries to think of what to say.  “Fine,” is all he comes up with.

“Fine how?” says Pete.  “Fine like you’re tired because you’ve been writing too much music so we have to meet up again and record it, or fine like you’re saying that because you haven’t left your house in four days since you called me from the grocery store?”  Pete pauses.  “Do I need to call your mother?”

“No, Jesus,” says Patrick.  “Fine as in, I’m fine.  My life isn’t exciting like yours.  You can go ahead and talk more about Ashlee now.”  

“Talk about yourself.”  Pete can be very stubborn when it comes to Patrick.  When it comes to a lot of things, really, but it’s most annoying when he gets it into his head that Patrick’s wallowing in despair and it’s up to him to fix it.  

“There’s nothing to talk about,” says Patrick irritably, because by and large he’s a pretty boring guy and he doesn’t really feel like telling Pete how he can’t even manage to date someone decent.  He’ll save that for when they get drunk together and he can’t help it.  

“Hey,” says Pete, “I know, you should come out and visit.  We can do exciting things.  Or you can just stay holed in my guest room up with your computer, I don’t really care.”

“Gee, thanks.”  Patrick takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.  His mouth tastes a little like something died in it despite the fact that he’d swear he brushed his teeth after dinner.  

“No, I mean, come on, Patrick,” says Pete.  “You’re like a little genius with that thing.  Come out though?”  Patrick thinks about it.  “I miss you,” says Pete.

“Fine,” says Patrick.  “I’ll come.”  

He can imagine Pete’s fistpump on the other end of the line.  “See you soon?”

“I’m gonna get some sleep now,” Patrick says.  “Night.”  

His only company that night is an email titled “tix” that pops up in his inbox minutes after Pete hangs up.

 

+

 

Staying with Pete turns into staying with Pete and Ashlee because she’s over so much.  Patrick thought that only Pete had so much energy to pour into a relationship, but Ashlee proves herself his equal there.  It’s not in the Facebook-stalker way Pete has going for him, but she’s always dropping by and leaving stuff behind (as if Pete would forget about her if he couldn’t wear her sweatshirt to Starbucks) and texting both of them funny little things she sees.  Patrick could get used to it, if he’d let himself, but he doesn’t know that he wants to be a part of Pete and Ashlee’s weird thing.  She’ll probably go back to not talking to him once he’s gone again.  

“Ashlee says you don’t respond to her texts,” says Pete, catching Patrick right as he’s putting down his phone after a picture of Ashlee wearing a ridiculous hat— _for pete_ , she’d written.  _Maybe I’ll find a nice one for you too._  

“Last night she texted me a picture of a pair of handcuffs, Pete,” says Patrick.  “I don’t know how you’d want me to respond.”  

“She did?” Pete looks half concerned, half amused.  “How come I didn’t get that one?”

“I don’t know that I want an answer,” says Patrick.  “That’s, y’know, thoughts for your sex life.”  

“Right, like we haven’t shared one of those before.”  

Patrick tries not to think about how the last sex he had was with a girl in Portland who was really into Pete’s tattoos.  “Yeah but now that’s kind of between you and Ashlee.  You know?”

Pete shrugs and flops down on the couch next to him.  “It’s not like she doesn’t know about us,” he says.  “Like, she gets that you’re my best friend and all still, you know?  So that’s kind of why she’s trying to.  I mean.  She wants you to like her.”

“Oh.”  Patrick feels vaguely guilty for wondering, on his worse nights, if Pete would eventually just stop talking to him at all because now he had Ashlee around.  “I promise I don’t…I don’t hate her or anything.”

“Duh,” says Pete.  “She wants us to go to dinner tonight?”

So they do.  Patrick dresses in the nicest clothes he brought and Pete wears the hat she sticks on his head when she comes home.  Ashlee looks fantastic like this is what she _does_ ; Patrick doesn’t know if they  had reservations in advance or she just decided they should do dinner and made it happen, but they end up in a table that’s fairly isolated with a nice bottle of wine and Patrick stares at the menu while Ashlee catches Pete up on—something.  Patrick doesn’t know enough about her life to fill in the details.

When someone kicks him under the table, Patrick’s ready to elbow Pete back and tell him to knock it the fuck off—but it’s Ashlee who says, “Hey, you can’t come out to dinner with us and be silent the whole time.”

It would appear he can, though, because it’s pretty obvious from the way that Pete and Ashlee can’t keep their eyes off each other that he’s superfluous for the time being.  It didn’t occur to him before that he’d be crashing a date by coming out but now it’s perfectly obvious.  

“Dude,” says Pete.  “I totally should have called your mom.  What is up with you?”

“ _Nothing_ ,” Patrick snaps, and then instantly feels bad about it because Pete probably doesn’t even think this is weird.

 “Aww, Trick, c’mon.”  Pete scoots his chair so he’s jammed between Patrick and the leg of the table and throws an arm around Patrick.  “Whatever it is, it’s fine.”  At the first brush of Pete’s lips on his cheek, Patrick’s reflexes kick in and he shoves Pete back.

“Fuck off,” he says.  “What the hell, Pete.”

“What the hell yourself,” says Pete.  “I’m trying to help you not have a shitty week.  You don’t have to be such a bitch about it.”

“ _Language_ ,” Ashlee reprimands from the other side of the table; possibly the only thing worse than having this fight at all is having it in a restaurant, in front of Ashlee.

“An—an ungrateful asshole,” Pete substitutes.  “That is the word.  For you right now.”  

Patrick could slam Pete into the table and give him at least a bloody nose, or he could storm out of the restaurant and catch a flight back to Chicago and who cares about his stuff; in the end, he looks away from Pete and counts to ten.  “Can we not,” he starts, proud of the way his voice barely has an edge to it, “do this here.  Please.”  

“Fine,” says Pete, in the tone of voice that means there will likely be punches thrown before the night is out.  

Patrick doesn’t know how they make it through the meal at all because each sip of wine threatens him going back on his word and antagonizing Pete and every look Pete throws him says that Pete would bite.  Somehow, Ashlee makes enough small talk to stop Pete from glaring at Patrick and Patrick manages a few sentences that sound mostly normal.  It’s a relief when Ashlee finally calls for the check and slips the waiter her card with a small smile.     

On the way out of the restaurant, someone at another table calls, “Pete!” and Patrick books it out of there; he hates dealing with the public on a good day.  He makes it outside and slumps against the wall in the little side-alley the place offers.  It’s the closest he can get to being away from people, and that’s spoiled when Ashlee braves the gravel track in heels and comes to stand in front of him.   

“What,” says Patrick.  

 “Look,” she says, “I don’t know what it is or if you even want to talk about it, but if you want to talk about it to someone who’s not Pete?  He’s not here right now.”  Patrick shrugs.  Anything he tells Ashlee will probably get back to Pete in the end.  “You also sort of look like you could use a hug,” she adds; and she’s so earnest and nonjudgmental about it that Patrick nods.  Patrick’s sort of used to the smell of Ashlee’s perfume because it’s not like she doesn’t wear it around him all the time but he’s surprised that just the scent of it calms him down; he’s never consciously thought that Ashlee was that close to him.

“It’s kind of,” he finds himself saying even though he didn’t plan to, “the thing is, it’s kind of sad that I have to get hugs from _other people_ ’s girlfriends.  You know?”

Ashlee’s lips are a question against his that he doesn’t know how to answer.

“Uh,” he stammers.  “I’m.  We—.  _Pete_.”

“He’s fine with it,” says Ashlee.  “We talked about it when he told me that you two used to do this and I thought—I mean, you don’t have to say yes, but—“

Patrick tries to remember how to breathe.  “We should probably…not here.”    

It’s fortunate that Pete makes it outside then, and Ashlee grabs on his hand and tugs him toward the car.  “I thought we were going for ice cream?” he says.  “Ash?”

“No ice cream,” says Ashlee, “because I just won.”  

“You—what?”  Pete unlocks his car and Patrick climbs into the back, stares out the window because he can feels Pete’s eyes on him in the rearview mirror.  “Did she really?”

“I can’t believe you had a bet,” says Patrick, feeling the blush creep up into his cheeks.  “Asshole.”  

“It was more of a competition,” says Ashlee, smug.  “You should feel honored.”  Her hand is already creeping up Pete’s thigh and between that and the speed Pete’s driving at, Patrick hopes that they’ll actually make it back to Pete’s place.  His heart’s already thudding in his ears because this is _Ashlee_ , this is Pete’s actual girlfriend and not someone he picked up at a show and is never going to see again.  He wonders if it would be worse to back out before he has the chance to screw anything up.   

As soon as Pete pulls into his garage they’re out of the car and into his house, Ashlee pushing Pete against a wall so she can kiss him while Patrick carefully takes off his shoes.  He’s not sure he wants to take off more at the moment.  If he slipped out now, they probably wouldn’t notice.

“Okay,” says Ashlee, once she’s gotten Pete’s tie loosened and his hat thrown aside, “how are we going to do this?”  

“Wait,” says Pete.  “Ash, hang on, you have to, like.  Let Patrick catch up here.”  

“Oh.”  Ashlee walks over to Patrick and his chance to run is gone.  “Patrick, hi.”

“Hi?”

“Hi.”  She leans in and kisses him again and this time she lingers because they’re not in some half-secluded alley.  When Ashlee swipes her tongue over his lower lip, Patrick takes the hint and gives her more.  His hand slides down her back to rest on her ass.  “Yeah,” Ashlee gasps into his mouth when he grinds into her, “oh, Patrick, yeah.”  

“Hey, c’mon,” says Pete, when Ashlee goes for Patrick’s tie.  “We can’t do this here, we need, like…Patrick, c’mon, you know how this goes.”

Ashlee finishes pulling Patrick’s tie off anyway and steals another kiss.

“Yo,” says Pete, smacking her on the ass.  She squeaks and jolts the littlest bit closer to Patrick.  “Let’s go, bedroom, now.”

“Fine,” says Ashlee, pulling back.  “But for the record, I was the one trying to take it easy on Patrick.”

“You call that easy?” says Pete.  “God, Ash.”

Ashlee shoves at Pete to make him move toward the stairs, and then runs to catch up and worms her hand into his back pocket.  When they reach Pete’s bedroom Patrick doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but it’s certainly not the normalcy of it all.  Pete wastes no time in unbuttoning his shirt and sliding down his pants and yeah, okay, Patrick knows how this one goes.  

“Hey,” says Ashlee, as Patrick unwraps her from her dress and slides a finger under her bra, “I think you and Pete should get me off.”  

Patrick lets his hand slide down to rub her through her panties.

“Yeah,” she says.  “Your hands, Pete’s mouth, that sounds good.”  She gasps a little on the last word and Patrick would honestly do whatever she wanted.  

“Okay,” he says.  “Yeah, bed.”  

“Patrick,” says Pete, “Dude, at least finish with your shirt first.”    

“Yes,” says Ashlee, “ _Please_ ,” so Patrick starts unbuttoning his shirt while she pulls Pete in and kisses him before pushing his head down.  By the time Patrick joins them Pete’s already at work between her legs.  “Please,” Ashlee says again, so Patrick slides in closer behind her and kisses the back of her neck and holds her open under Pete’s tongue, running a finger over her clit every once in awhile to mix things up.  “Fuck!” Ashlee yells when she comes, bucking against Pete’s face.  “Oh, oh fuck, that was so.”  Patrick presses another kiss to the back of her neck and lets his other hand keep exploring her sides, her breasts, her tummy because she hasn’t told him he can’t.  

“Fuck me,” he can hear Pete begging into her thigh, “Ash, please, fuck me.”  

“Not right now, baby,” she says.  

“ _Please_.”

“My strap-on’s at my place,” says Ashlee, telling Patrick maybe more than he needed to know.  Pete makes a little noise in the back of his throat and she runs a hand through Pete’s hair.  “Babe, I’m sorry, but maybe…Patrick, will you?”  

“Uh.”  That’s a line they never actually crossed, him and Pete; there had been a little bit of kissing, some minor contact, but they’d never actually gotten one another off.

“Yes,” says Pete, “Yes, that’s good, Trick, please.”

“Uh, okay,” he says.  He’s fucked other guys before.  It’s been awhile, but it’s not like he’s forgotten.  “Lube?”  

“Drawer,” Ashlee points, and Patrick grabs it.  “Pete, if you want to get fucked you’d better get over here.  I want your mouth on me while it happens.”  

Pete cants his hips up when Patrick moves behind him and Patrick slicks up his fingers.  “Pete, I need you to relax for me, okay?” he says, putting one hand on Pete’s hip to steady him.  Patrick doesn’t have a lot to go on, but Pete doesn’t seem very relaxed.

“Pete.  C’mon.  Deep breath for me.”  He waits for Pete’s inhale and shaky exhale.  “Relax,” he says again, and then starts to open Pete up.  

Every little noise Pete makes seems like a temptation of fate, because Patrick doesn’t remember this part well enough to know where Pete is right now.  Ashlee nods him on until Pete’s noises have turned to breathy little whines that are easier for Patrick to interpret.  “You ready for me?” he asks after three fingers; Pete grunts out a “yes” and Patrick presses into him, slow as he can, and feels Pete groan under him at the sensation.

Patrick tries to start slow but it turns out that Pete is as impatient here as he is with everything else and suddenly it’s hard to keep control.  If Pete wants more, that’s what Patrick will give him.  He slams into Pete and relishes the way he can feel every whimper and moan Pete makes beneath him.  The sound Ashlee makes when she comes again makes Patrick choke back as gasp of his own and it only gets worse when Pete’s mouth isn’t occupied.  Most everything out of it seems to be some variation of the words “please” or “fuck” or “Patrick.”  

“Yeah,” says Patrick, when he gets it together enough to realize what Pete wants.  “Yeah, here, I got you.”  He jacks Pete with their rhythm (“ _drummers_ ,” Pete will say later) and tries for as much finesse as he can manage.  

Patrick hasn’t forgotten what Pete sounds like when he’s close, but it’s entirely different when he’s making those sounds because of him.  It takes all he’s got to hold on; the second he feels Pete come becomes the second that Patrick’s own orgasm rushes through him.  

Patrick pulls out and collapses on the bed beside Pete, sweaty and exhausted.  “Fuck,” says Pete, “fuck that was so good, thank you.”  He kisses Patrick gently, nothing like the desperate, open-mouthed kisses he’d been demanding of Ashlee.  Patrick can just barely taste the tang of her on Pete’s lips.    

“Trick,” Pete whispers, right as Patrick’s about to drift off.  “Hey, Trick.  Lunchbox.  _Patrick_.”

“Mm,” says Patrick, unwillingly.

“I’m a mess.”  

Patrick doesn’t think he needs to respond to that one, so he doesn’t.  Pete pinches his arm.

“ _Ow_.” This time Patrick opens his eyes.  Pete’s much closer than he expects.  

“Bathroom,” says Pete, pointing behind him.  “Washcloth. Or tissues, don’t care which.”

“Get it yourself.” Patrick is warm and comfortable and _tired_ and he’s not fucking moving.

“Can’t walk.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah. ’S why.”  

Patrick doesn’t know that he believes that, but he drags himself out of bed anyway.  “You’re a dick,” he tells Pete when he gets back, and throws the washcloth at him for good measure.

“Thanks,” says Pete; maybe since Patrick’s sharing a bed with him, it’s good for him to get all the come off.  “Here, let me—“ he wipes Patrick off too and chucks the washcloth in the general direction of the bathroom.

“You’re picking that up tomorrow,” says Ashlee.  

Patrick closes his eyes again.  “Night,” he says.  He thinks he hears Pete roll over and whisper something to Ashlee but he’s asleep before he can verify. 

 

+

 

Ashlee never really goes back home for the rest of Patrick’s visit, and the bed in the guest room remains largely unused.  “Just,” says Ashlee the third night, when he’s trying to figure out how to bow out of the conversation gracefully since they’ve already passed the door to his room, “it doesn’t really make sense for you to _not_ be with us when you could be with us.  Right?  I mean, you’re not even here for long…” so Patrick ends up fucking Pete’s girlfriend almost as much as Pete does.  He’s also the recipient of one very skilled good-morning blow job from Pete (and wow, Patrick knew Pete was good but this is something else) and he returns the favor after, because Ashlee is gone and Patrick himself has to fly out that evening.

“You sure you’re gonna be okay?” he asks Pete for about the hundredth time as he tries to round up all his socks.  He’s certain that some of them will stay in Los Angeles with Pete, waiting for his next visit; or perhaps they’ll just get co-opted into Pete’s wardrobe.  

“Yeah,” says Pete, “of course.”  He’s been watching Patrick too closely for Patrick to believe him easily, but he lets it slide.  

“Call me if you’re lonely,” he says, then thinks that through.  “No, call me when you get lonely.  We can—we should do some writing, I can’t believe we didn’t…”

“Hey, we will,” says Pete.  “In fact—”  He grabs a battered red notebook and slides it into Patrick’s laptop case.  “Keep you busy on the plane.”  

They laze around the rest of the day because no one’s there to make them do anything else.  Patrick used to take days like this for granted but now he never seems to know when he’ll see Pete again.  The answer, is always, too far in the future—he’s having trouble already focusing on anything but Pete’s bare chest, and god knows he’s seen it enough that it shouldn’t be an issue.  That doesn’t mean he can stop his eyes from drifting back to the mark Ash’d left on his neck before they left for the airport the other day.  If he were already sitting by Pete it might not be too weird to lean in and scrape his teeth over it just as a reminder (“I was here too”) but for some reason he’d chosen to collapse on Pete’s oversized armchair after he dumped his shit by the door.  It’s less comfortable than his normal spot, and further away from Pete besides, so Patrick really has no idea why he did it.  

Yesterday, it’d seemed an eternity before Patrick had to catch his flight back but now the clock has to be lying because it’s almost four, meaning it’s almost time for Patrick’s trip to the airport.  At three-fifty-five, Patrick goes to double-check that he still has everything.  Three-fifty-six has him running upstairs because where are his _shoes_ , and three-fifty-eight has Pete doing the same because he decides to not make a statement by driving Patrick to LAX shirtless.  

“Um,” says Pete, right as Patrick’s about to open the door.  “Patrick…”

Patrick _knew_ Pete was lying when he said he was going to be okay because Pete hates being alone and he’s without Ashlee for another week, and now Patrick is leaving too.  

“Dammit, Pete,” says Patrick.  He intends to say more but when he turns around, Pete crowds him into the door with a kiss.  And then another, and another, and another.

They don’t leave the house until 4:17 and Pete swears at the abysmal LA traffic.  If Patrick were a bit more confident, he might make some joke about Pete purposely delaying him so he’ll miss his flight.  Instead he messes with the radio station until he finds a song he can sing along to.  Just in case Pete wants something to remember.  

They get to the airport not as early as they should, but early enough, and Pete gives Patrick five hugs in the drop off line.  “Come out to visit,” says Patrick.  “Your turn this time.”  

“Yeah,” says Pete.  “But LA is cooler.”  

“Nah,” says Patrick.  “Chicago has me in it.”  

“I know.”  Fuck, Patrick didn’t mean to make Pete feel worse.

“Hey, stop moping,” he says.  “We have phones, I’ve figured out Skype…besides, once I’m gone and you can hang out with your other friends again, you probably won’t even want to talk to me.”  They both know how much of a lie that is.

“Go,” says Pete, “go catch your flight.”

Patrick’s tempted to ask, _what if I didn’t_? but he restrains himself.  

“Okay,” he says.  “Okay, yeah, I’ll call you when I’m home.”  Usually he wouldn’t be afraid to tell Pete he loved him but given how they were just making out against Pete’s door an hour earlier, he doesn’t want it to come across the wrong way.

Pete waves as Patrick lines up at security and he’s still there each time Patrick checks over his shoulder, until the crowds inside the airport make it impossible to see the outside of Los Angeles at all.

 

+

 

Patrick always feels most productive when he has a project going on, and since they’re officially in recuperation mode for band stuff, that project can’t be writing a new album.  He takes it upon himself to redecorate his place because he hadn’t really done a great job of it before _Infinity_ got big, and it’s a little lacking in homeyness.  So Patrick does color swatches and carpet swatches and then goes out furniture shopping.  

Seven hours later, he regrets his decision to do everything on his own rather than hire an interior designer.

Finding a sofa is easy because Patrick knows that he wants people to be able to sit on it, in front of his TV, and the egregious lime color that must’ve been in style this year doesn’t go with his existing decor.  When it comes to everything else, Patrick is faced with a million indecisions.  His solution comes in the form of his mother, who tends to be efficient with this sort of thing and who now has no more reason to drop hints about how Patrick doesn’t see her enough in the little time he still spends in Chicago.  They parade through an endless number of stores looking for tables and chairs and dressers and cabinets and bed frames.  Patrick begins to re-think his ambition; isn’t re-doing the living room enough?

“How about this one?” his mom asks, stopping by a burgundy frame.  It’s nice, but not exactly what Patrick is thinking.  

“No,” says Patrick, and moves on.  His mom points out five more frames that Patrick vetoes before he finds one that might work.

“That’s not going to leave much empty space in your room,” she says.  “I really think you need to go with something smaller.”  Patrick doesn’t even realize until she’s said it that the reason none of the other beds looked right is because they won’t be big enough for when Pete and Ashlee come to visit.  He scrubs a hand across his brow and wonders when that started mattering so much.

“Maybe we should give it up for the day,” he says.  “Let’s go get dinner?  And I’ll go home after and measure how much space I have.”  He pulls out his phone to snap a picture of the dimensions he’s looking at, because he’ll never remember them on his own.

When he makes it back home that night, Patrick can see without the help of his measuring tape that his mom is right.  He’d thought choosing the smaller room for his bedroom wouldn’t be an issue because he spent so little of his time in Chicago, and even when he was home, he was still single.  Now his choice is to get the smaller bed, or move all his shit to the other room.

It’s a good thing Patrick’s replacing most of his furniture.  He can make other people help him with some of the heavy lifting.

He’s dripping sweat by the time he’s done anyway, and his old bed frame is still in the middle of his empty bedroom.  Or—not his bedroom anymore, as proven by the clothes no longer hanging in the closet and the pile of records and papers and a tantalizing red notebook stacked by the mattress a room over.  

The next morning,  Patrick teams up with his mom and a sheet of notebook paper creased around the new measurements and buys himself a bed.  Between him and his mother and a pair of movers, they get it in and installed, and Patrick’s old one off to wherever unwanted furniture goes.  Then Patrick realizes he needs new bedding too, and by the time he’s gotten himself some it’s seven.  Too late to do anything big, but too early to have nothing to do.

He settles on calling Pete while he contemplates how he’s going to arrange the rest of his room.

“Hey,” Pete answers on the second ring.  “Gimme a sec, let me—no Ash, not here, next one.  Sorry.  Trying to get us to a restaurant.”

“Oh.”  Patrick waits for a barrage of words, but it doesn’t come.  “Sorry to interrupt.”

“No worries,” says Pete.  “Hey, you haven’t…it’s been awhile.”  Patrick thinks about it.  Aside from their usual exchange of weird texts and lyric dump emails, he doesn’t think he’s actually spoken with Pete since the night he got back.  

“Sorry,” he says.  “Been busy.  I’m redecorating my place.  You should come see it soon.”

“Hm?  Yeah,” says Pete.  “Totally.  Ash, next right and then it’s on the right.”  

“Okay,” says Patrick, “Well, I’ll let you go?  Enjoy your night.”  

“Thanks,” says Pete; when he hangs up, Patrick can hardly tell the difference.

+

 

Patrick had imagined his redecorated house would be something out of a reality TV show, where he’d feel like things were fresh and new and his in a way they’d never been before.  In reality, he still feels like he’s floating around even on his brand-new sofa in front of his brand-new entertainment center.  More to give himself something to do than anything else, he invites over Joe and Andy and assorted friends and neighbors as a sort of housewarming.  At least it keeps him busy for a few hours.  Patrick is almost fooled into thinking the party was all he needed, but once Andy finally heads out midway through the night, after an intense discussion about music and an album they aren’t officially talking about yet, the ennui sets back in.  

That could have something to do with the fact that he’s between projects—since Pete is off with Ashlee, the work he’s doing toward their next album is just his for the time being.  Then again, even that isn’t as solid as it used to be.  Patrick has a few stints of producing that reassure him that he knows what he’s doing, and he needs them, after the many days of sitting frustrated with GarageBand on his laptop, printouts of Pete’s words spread out next to him.  

The problem isn’t that they don’t talk, because Patrick knows that they’re in as frequent communication as always.  Or Pete is, at least; there isn’t a day Patrick doesn’t receive at least five random texts.  Pete also dumps words at him in the long-winded emails that he writes when he can’t sleep and his options are do that or something worse.  And while that tells Patrick what’s going on in Pete’s day-to-day life, and then gives him all the interior stuff Pete desperately tries to avoid, there’s a level missing.  It must be the one that helps Patrick unlock everything, because right now none of his songs are making sense.

Patrick listens to what he has for the hundredth time and then slams his laptop closed.  He dials Pete, like maybe just a few words from him will click everything back into place.

“Hey Trick,” says Pete.  “How’s it?  Oh, Ash says hi.”  Patrick can hear her in the background, saying that and then something else that he can’t quite make out.  “She also says that talking to you isn’t going to get me out of doing the dishes later.”  

Patrick, frankly, is kind of sick of the world rubbing things in his face.  “Never mind,” he says, and hangs up.  It’s not like Pete would have been able to fix things anyway.

Patrick tries to sleep and doesn’t; reorganizes his record collection by artist until he decides that organizing by genre and then artist is more efficient anyway; and cleans the place more thoroughly than he has since he took everything out of it.  He steps carefully around his laptop, trying to acknowledge it as little as possible.  In the gray light of early-early morning Patrick scrubs himself clean, shower running as hot as possible, and then debates between a Starbucks run or staying in.  

Laying on his couch is easiest, even if he could use a blanket.

The sound of keys in his door startles Patrick enough to shake him from his doze.  His first thought is that it’s his mom coming over, because she’s the only one with keys to his place.  He pulls out his phone to see if he accidentally called her in a minor state of breakdown when he was too tired to think straight, but his outgoing calls list is topped by the one to Pete from the night before, seventeen seconds long.  There’s also a long string of missed calls (Pete) and texts that Patrick doesn’t read.  Maybe whoever’s at his door is back from a hard night, mistakenly on the wrong stoop.  It’s better than an alternative in which he has to talk to someone.

That dream is shattered when the door finally swings inward; all of Patrick’s questions are answered by Pete swearing at the lock, mornings, and a lot of other things Patrick can’t quite decipher.

“Pete?” he sits up enough to verify that the person cussing out his door isn’t, in fact, a stranger who just happens to sound like his best friend.  

“Patrick.”  Pete finally gets his keys out of the door with a yank and slams the thing shut.  His coat goes on the floor in a pile with his shoes and phone.  Pete himself ends up on the couch with Patrick’s head in his lap.  “What was that last night?”

Patrick wills his Mac to hide under a table or, perhaps, find its way into the nearest garbage can and never come out.  He feels petty and spoiled, making Pete fly all the way from LA to deal with his moods.  “Why are you here?” he asks.  It’s much more simple than trying to explain what’s going on.  He doesn’t fully know the answer.

“Dude,” says Pete.  “You call me for five seconds last night and then say ‘never mind’ and hang up?  And expect me not to come see what’s wrong?”

Patrick thinks that most people probably wouldn’t book a flight halfway across the country based on that.  “Where’s Ashlee?”

“Back in LA.  She has a thing.  What’s going on?”

“Nothing, probably,” says Patrick.  

“Patrick.”  Pete nudges at his shoulder until he sits up.  “C’mon.”  Patrick lets Pete hug him because it requires less resistance than any other option.  He’s not sure why that’s his reason, because he feels less tense as soon as Pete’s arms are around him.

“Okay,” says Pete, eventually.  “You are going to stay here for a bit.  I am going to get us coffee.  And then we’re gonna talk.”

“Oh,” says Patrick.  

Pete looks at him.  

“That sounds good?” Patrick tries.

Pete sighs and gets up.  “Be back in a few.”  

Because Pete is Patrick’s best friend, he knows what Patrick’s Starbucks order is on a shitty day and he knows that Patrick hasn’t eaten breakfast.  He comes back, therefore, with drinks and muffins and a phone case he saw somewhere along the way that reminded him of Hemmy.  Patrick doesn’t ask.

“Gimme your phone,” says Pete, when Patrick’s too busy ingesting caffeine to really do anything; “here, look.”

Patrick doesn’t think he’ll keep the case, but it’ll just upset Pete if he takes it off now.

“So,” says Pete when they’re done.  “We’re going to start with why you’ve hardly called me in the past couple of months?”  

Patrick shrugs.  “I was busy?”

“Yeah,” says Pete.  “I got that excuse.  And then, y’know, you _weren’t_ really busy—not according to Andy—so maybe you can try again?”

“Why haven’t you called me?” Patrick asks.  Pete freezes.

“I did,” he says.

Patrick pulls out his phone and checks, just to be sure.  “You really didn’t.”

Pete’s busy dissembling his muffin in a way that’s going to leave crumbs all over Patrick’s floor.  Patrick should tell him to pick his mess up because he just fucking vacuumed, but he can’t think of anything he cares about less right now.

“I guess,” Pete says finally,  “I thought that maybe if you wanted to be talking to me, you would be.”

“Right,” says Patrick.  “Right, yeah, okay.”  He takes a deep breath.  His hands are shaking.  “I didn’t sleep much last night,” he says.  “I think I’m gonna…”

“Trick, wait, we can—.”

Patrick shrugs Pete’s hand off.  “Don’t bother,” he says.  “I’m fine.”  He shuts his bedroom door and looks at his new ice blue comforter and the empty space that used to be for his instruments and thinks, _this was all a huge fucking mistake_.

+

 

When Patrick wakes up, Pete yells at him for avoiding the problem and then yells at him a lot more for not bothering to tell anyone about the seven completed songs (and twice that number in progress) on his computer, and Patrick yells right back at Pete for jumping to conclusions and coming to Chicago and going through Patrick’s fucking _stuff_ ; and once they start there’s really no stopping them for the next three hours.  When they’ve finally got it all out Patrick’s voice is raspy and Pete’s gone through most of a box of tissues and both of them still feel like shit, but Patrick is really too tired to sustain his anger.  He’s still not going to apologize, but he orders them a pizza.  It’ll have to do.

After eating (Patrick’s not rightly sure what meal it is) they sit down and talk, and maybe it’s about the words in Pete’s notebook and the files on Patrick’s computer, but it’s something.  It’s more than they’ve done in months.  “Look,” Pete says at the end of it, “Patrick, it’s good, okay?  I mean—it’s not perfect yet, but…”  

“Yeah,” says Patrick.  “Um, are you sure you don’t want me to start over? We have time.”  

Pete kicks at him a little under the table.  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you had _half an album_ ,” he says.  Half of the songs Patrick has right now are sure to get cut, and the other half might not make it either.  

“Knock it off,” says Patrick.  “Can we, let’s do something else.”  

 _Something else_ ends up being video games, because Patrick hasn’t broken in his new TV yet with a proper gaming session.  He beats Pete at every game they play for four hours until Pete resorts to tickling Patrick and making a grab for his controller while he’s flailing.  “Fuck off,” says Patrick, sending an elbow back in hopes that it will connect with one of Pete’s vital organs.  He knocks Pete’s wrist instead, the shock jolting up through Pete’s hand and sending him in the wrong direction.  “I’m still winning, ha!”  

Their gaming session ends when Patrick turns off the console before Pete can tickle him again and they end up stretched out on the couch, Pete’s pizza breath too close to Patrick’s face for comfort, and actually talk.  Patrick doesn’t have a whole lot of life to update Pete on but Pete seems to have a lot to say.  That, Patrick is used to.  Half the way through Pete’s narration of an event he’d attended with Ashlee, Patrick buries his face in Pete’s hoodie because his eyes are getting itchy.  It’s not until he feels a tightness in the back of his throat that he realizes he’s not just tired; by that point, there’s no holding back the tears.

“…Patrick?” Pete asks, cutting off his story in the middle, “Patrick, are you okay?”

“Fine,” says Patrick, because he really can’t think of any explanation.  “Go on.  What do you think was in the punch?”

Pete seems offended that Patrick even cares anymore.  “Let’s get you to bed, okay?” he says.  “It’s been a hell of a day.”

Patrick would be perfectly happy to stay right where he is but Pete drags him up and makes him brush his teeth.  “Yours too,” says Patrick, through a mouthful of foam.  He pulls out an extra toothbrush and shoves it at Pete, who does the world’s quickest job and then puts an arm around Patrick to keep him from flopping back down on the couch.  “Hey, this used to be your music room, right?” he asks, as Patrick flicks on the bedroom light.  “Or do I just not remember?”

Patrick shakes his head.  “I changed it,” he says, and doesn’t offer any more.  

“Cool.”  Pete shoves Patrick toward the bed and pulls out his pajamas—Patrick still can’t remember where they are half of the time, but Pete guesses right the first try.

“Do you have extra blankets?” says Pete.  “And can I take one of your pillows?”

“Couch is kinda uncomfortable,” Patrick mutters as he strips his shirt off and kicks out of his jeans.

“Oh,” says Pete.  “Um, I could go to my place?”

“Stop being an idiot,” Patrick says.  “I might have to punch you again.”  It’s too soon for that to be properly funny but Pete doesn’t ditch him.  He does wait until Patrick’s settled in bed, lights off, to sit down on the other side of the mattress.  

“Trick?” he asks, sliding under the covers just close enough that he can snake an arm around Patrick’s shoulder.  Patrick clings tight and tries not to cry any more, which is mostly a losing battle.

“Hey,” says Pete, “whatever it is, it’s gonna be okay.”  He kisses Patrick’s forehead and then his cheek and Patrick thinks for a moment about kissing Pete back.  

Then he thinks, _geez, Stump, you need to get out more_.

He listens to Pete’s breathing even out next to him and eventually falls into a restless sleep himself. 

 

+

 

Pete buys enough groceries to last the two of them approximately a month but in the end he only stays for two days because it turns out he’s actually supposed to be doing things back in LA  Patrick buys him a ticket home as soon as he figures it out.

“It’s fine,” says Pete; “They already know I’m a diva,” but that’s not really a suitable excuse in Patrick’s book.  

Pete promises he’ll come back, and that he’ll call, and that Patrick needs to _tell him_ if something is wrong because Pete can’t really figure it out when Patrick’s not talking and he’s halfway across the country.

“Sorry,” says Patrick.  He means it.  He doesn’t have a clue what happened, really.  

Pete calls him from the boarding gates and from the baggage claim and from his doorstep just to make sure they’ll stay in touch but it turns out that Patrick still doesn’t know what to say.  He dials Pete’s number once a week in case he figures it out between conversations.  He trashes two of the files in GarageBand and contemplates dropping his MacBook out a fifteenth-story window, but that seems too extreme.  Pete and Ashlee Skype him one weekend, giddy with news of a baby (and what, thinks Patrick, when did that happen?) and then Pete stays on for hours after she leaves, telling Patrick he’s going to propose to her and then talking about all his plans and generally doing all the things they would do if they were actually spending time together.  It turns out that isn’t enough because Pete always takes up so much space in a room; he’s bright and energetic and the kind of attention magnet that makes it easy to ignore anything else.

“Yo, Patrick,” says Pete, and Patrick realizes there was a question about ten seconds ago that he hasn’t answered.  “You still with me?”

“I wish you were actually here,” says Patrick without thinking.  “Um, sorry, I mean.  What?”

“I can come out,” says Pete.  “For real this time.  It’s not like I have a lot of reasons to be in LA constantly, right?”

“And Ashlee?” Patrick asks, “She can come too?”

“Sure.”  Pete picks up his phone, likely to text her so he can figure it out.  “We probably have to work around her schedule but yeah, she’s been talking about getting out of here for a bit.”  

“Good.  Chicago’s missed you.”  

“You’ve missed me, fucker,” Pete says.

“Duh.”  Patrick thought he’d made that apparent.  “Hey, hey that hook we were working on—what if…” and he grabs the guitar he has out to try it out for Pete.

By the time Pete makes it to Chicago they actually have a good part of an album written.  Patrick, Joe, and Andy have all laid a few tracks and tinkered with the new stuff but Patrick still can’t get a feel for the finished product he’s after.  _Bring your bass_ , Patrick texts, and locates his extra in case Pete forgets.  He’s itching to get his hands under the rough patches, a desire that’s half terror, half curiosity.  Nothing sounds right without all four of them there in the studio.

Patrick doesn’t realize the razor’s edge they’re dancing on until Pete shows up.  He was right, all those days of writing, to think that there was a piece missing.  With Pete in sight the rhymes turn rancid and ugly under Patrick’s tongue.  He has to do so much rewriting the first day of practice that he calls it off halfway through.  “Pete and I need to go through this together,” he says.  “Sorry, I thought…”

“Hey, no, you’re doing good.”  Joe and Andy’s faces say the opposite, but Pete always has to try.  “It’s my fault I haven’t been around much.”  He buys Patrick lunch like he actually owes him an apology, and they get to it.  Patrick’s steeling himself to work through the night when Ashlee knocks on the doorframe and then walks in before either of them can answer.

“You haven’t eaten dinner,” she says, “and it’s eleven.  C’mon, guys.”

Patrick hmms his acknowledgement and tries a new chord progression.  Pete grabs Ashlee’s hand to pull himself up but Patrick doesn’t really need him here for this part.  They can go over the new stuff tomorrow.

“Patrick,” says Ashlee.  

“What?” he asks, too slow to keep Ashlee from pulling his guitar away from him.

“It is _eleven_ ,” she says again.  “I have been patient all day because I know you and Pete have band stuff to do.  But I haven’t seen you in months, so you do not get to hide away from me.”

“Oh.”  Patrick motions for his guitar back, but Ashlee walks around him and puts it in the case herself.

“I ordered food,” she says, as she snaps the last latch shut.  “And you are going to sit there and eat it and talk to me because it’s not fair that _Pete_ has to keep me updated on how you’re doing.”

“Oh,” says Patrick again.  “Sorry?”

Ashlee just raises an eyebrow and turns around.  “He’s been kinda bad at that bit lately,” Pete offers, rubbing Ashlee’s back.  

Patrick sighs and goes to pick up another mess he didn’t know he was causing.

There are no tears this time, though there is a lot of hugging Ashlee because she claims she has a lot of time to make up for.  “Next time,” she chastises him, “when I give you my number, you should actually use it.”  She laces their fingers together and Patrick’s shocked, though he shouldn’t be, by the cool band of metal that’s now part of her touch.  Christ, Ashlee’s marrying his best friend and Patrick stopped talking to her after he left LA because he’d figured he was just some game that Ashlee was playing to amuse Pete.

“Sorry,” says Patrick again.  “I didn’t know…”

“That I wanted to talk to you?” says Ashlee.  “Jesus, Patrick. I kind of thought we were friends, y’know.”

“Oh,” says Patrick.  “Uh—I mean.  I just….”

The food shows up before Patrick can think of a proper answer.  Pete answers the door and brings it to Patrick on the couch like he’s going to run away if he’s allowed to move; Patrick surreptitiously scoots over to leave room for Pete and Ashlee because he knows them.  Somehow Ashlee ends up half on his lap before the hour’s out, making out with Pete and trying to talk to Patrick at the same time.  Patrick wishes she’d pick one, and then maybe move off his lap before things get uncomfortable.  

“Babe,” she says, holding Pete back so he can’t follow her to where she’s leaned back further into Patrick.  Patrick wonders if it would be more or less awkward to remind her that he is a living, breathing, _feeling_ person and not a sofa.  Pete just unbuttons her shirt and slides down to mouth at her breast.  “Babe, we haven’t even asked Patrick if—oh, _fuck_ —”  It takes her a moment to remember what she was saying.  “If he—if he wants us to—please?”

“God yes,” Patrick breathes into her ear, and when Ashlee turns to kiss him he leans into it.  He lets his fingers slide her shirt the rest of the way off so he can touch her; helps her reposition so Pete can get her pants off; and then winds his hand through hers so he can hold Pete down as he licks and sucks at her.  He’s desperate enough for her that he ends up swallowing half of the noises she makes because he can’t go another minute without her.  

Patrick can sense rather than see that Pete has a hand down his own pants and is going to make a mess of Patrick’s couch, which is unsurprising, really.  It only takes a few seconds after Ashlee comes for Pete to follow and for the moment it’s silent but for the sound of Ashlee’s breath rushing past his ear; Pete’s trapped somewhere amongst Ashlee’s thighs.  Patrick tries very hard not to squirm.

“That,” Ashlee says at last, “was not very polite, Pete.”

“Don’t care.”  Pete’s words are slightly muffled with his head in Ashlee’s thigh as it is.  “Fuck, Ash.”  

Ashlee nudges at him until he lifts his head.  “ _Fine_ ,” Pete says.  “Move.”

Kind of the last thing Patrick wants is to lose Ashlee’s weight on top of him; it’s not enough, but it’s better than nothing, so he tries to hold her there.  “Maybe later,” she says to him, kissing him lightly before sliding off to settle at his side.  For a second Patrick thinks this is it; that he’ll have to get himself off as soon as they’re not around to observe his humiliation.  Then Pete’s on his knees in between Patrick’s legs.  

“Oh,” says Patrick, when one of Pete’s hands finds his thigh; the other, the button on his jeans.

“C’mon,” Pete mutters, too quietly to have it be a command.  More of a request, maybe.  Patrick scoots so Pete can get his pants out of the way—Pete ends up taking them all the way off, after a brief few seconds spent on Patrick’s shoes, and Patrick almost forgets how to breathe.  When that’s done Pete comes back and pauses over the spot where Patrick’s cock is tenting his boxers.  He leans down, mouths at it through the fabric.  Patrick throws his head back and fails to hold in a moan.

Pete seems perfectly content to keep begin a goddamned tease but Patrick’s already been waiting _forever_ and besides that, he doesn’t get laid as much as Pete does; so eventually enough is enough.  “Pete,” he says, “stop messing around, you fucker.”  With one hand he gets his boxers down far enough, with the other, he finds the back of Pete’s head and holds him.  “Blow me,” he says, and Pete does.

It’s good—this much Patrick remembers from the last time, but it’s not like all the details are going to stay steady anyhow.  Especially not when Patrick’s so turned on and desperate.  He can’t help but keep Pete right where he is and when Patrick fucks into his mouth Pete just moans and takes it.  It’s quite possibly the hottest thing that’s happened to Patrick in the past year.  “Oh,” says Patrick, at the exact moment that he realizes he’s not going to last as long as he wants to and is both disappointed by and glad for this fact “oh, fuck, Pete, I’m gonna.”  As a matter of courtesy he loosens his grip on Pete’s hair, but Pete just goes down again until Patrick comes down his throat.  Swallows around Patrick and licks him clean afterward and then leans his head against Patrick’s legs, still gasping slightly.  Patrick massages Pete’s scalp like he always does when Pete can’t sleep and Pete murmurs an exclamation of content.  Patrick could stay like this for awhile except his ass is sticking to the sofa and Pete’s knees are probably already sore and besides, he’s barely gotten his hands on Ashlee.

“Hey,” he says, pushing a bit at Pete’s head.  “We should go to bed, yeah?”  It takes a second, but Pete stumbles up from where he’s been sitting.  Patrick has a brief internal debate before stepping out of his boxers and leaving them with his pants.  They’ll have to clean up tomorrow, anyway.  Patrick helps Ashlee up and then hugs her close.  “I missed you,” he whispers into her hair.  “Sorry.”  Ashlee guides Patrick’s mouth to hers and kisses him softly until he feels ashamed, rebuked, mostly amazed.

With Ashlee in his arms and Pete making noise in the bathroom, Patrick allows himself a moment of pretending that the three of them will actually be together for a decent amount of time.  Maybe, he thinks, maybe once he’s gotten all the songs figured out and they’re recording again; they’ll all have to be in the same place then.  And then there’s a tour, and if they can convince Ashlee to come along…but he doesn’t know how either of them will feel about doing this around other people.  Patrick isn’t exactly a prize to be paraded.

Pete’s already claimed most of the pillows by the time they make it to bed.  Patrick only has to wrestle him a bit to liberate one, which he passes to Ashlee; he just shoves Pete over and takes half his pillow because he knows that’s how they’ll wake up regardless.  Pete’s quiet, but not asleep.  Patrick can see his eyes glinting back through the darkness.

“Hey,” he whispers, pulling Pete in so they can properly cuddle, “what’s up?”  

Pete’s only response is to slip a hand under Patrick’s tee and pull it up, over his head.  Patrick chucks it toward the dresser and lets Pete rearrange them so he’s laying on Patrick’s chest.  “What’s wrong?” Patrick asks again.  

Pete’s silent for a moment before he replies.  “’S fine,” he says, “nothing, ‘m fine, ’s fine.  Thank you.”  

Ashlee finds Patrick’s hand and squeezes it under the covers, affirming Patrick’s guess that this isn’t the first time of late Pete’s had this conversation.  He lets his other hand drift up to Pete’s hair and runs his fingers through it again, knowing at once how inadequate his response is, yet how essential.

 

+

 

They split their time between Ashlee and the band and Patrick wonders why they can’t do this always.  He feels bad about leaving Ashlee to fend for herself in Chicago, but she doesn’t seem to mind it—good, since it’s the place that spat them both out and Patrick can’t imagine who they’d be without it.  “It’s so nice to not have to deal with the paparazzi all the time,” she says and Pete nods his agreement.  Patrick forgets, a lot of the time, to google Pete because Pete does so much of that himself that someone needs to balance it out.  It’s not like Patrick needs to see it, anyway—he much prefers the Pete Wentz of reality.

It’s too soon that Pete and Ashlee fly back to LA with promises that they won’t be apart long.  The two of them have a wedding to plan still and Patrick’s only solace is that he’ll see them at the ceremony.  Pete asked him to be best man their last night in Chicago, after a fancy dinner, too much wine, and a desperate hand job.  Patrick half-wonders if he dreamed the whole thing.

In the meantime Patrick has an album’s worth of music to tweak, and the constant exposure to it puts him on edge.  Not only does Patrick not know quite what he’s doing, but Pete’s lyrics are more raw, veering into the sort of darkness that Patrick doesn’t even know how to address, much less answer.  Pete refuses to properly talk about it, so Patrick can’t do much other than make music for him and tell Pete to call him whenever.  Not like Pete doesn’t do that anyway.  Not like Patrick can really help.  Ashlee does her best, he knows, but some days there’s nothing anyone can do and more than anything Patrick wishes he were there for those days.  He’s well aware of how they can drag on a person.  

This time, Patrick stays in touch: he talks to Ashlee when she’s hanging out at Pete’s and when she’s catching a few hours to herself, and more than once when she’s in bed with Pete.  It’s not quite as good as having them there, but it sure beats jerking off alone.  For one fortunate night Ashlee has a layover in Chicago; she spends it in Patrick’s bed where he fucks her to the sound of Pete jerking off over speakerphone.  They go another couple rounds the next morning before she has to leave, but she catches a cab to the airport just in case anyone sees the bite mark on her neck.  After watching her pull away, Patrick calls Pete to make sure he’s doing okay and they do a bit of writing (mostly, Patrick thinks, so Pete has someone to sing to him).  Patrick stays on the line and listens to Pete breathe and fiddles with his guitar, playing nothing that’s anything.  “Pete,” he says, after it’s been too long with neither of them speaking, “Pete, talk to me.”  

“Don’t have anything to say,” says Pete.  And Pete—Pete _always_ has something to say, whether it’s news about Ashlee or his opinion on the latest Hollywood trends or a ridiculous story or his night out or a narration of whatever he’s doing at the time.  

“Okay,” says Patrick, because what else can he do?  He sings Pete another couple of songs before surmising that Pete’s fallen asleep for once.  “Good,” Patrick says into the phone, to no answer but Pete’s quiet breaths.  “Love you, Pete.”  Pete exhales, which Patrick takes as an answer.  

Patrick doesn’t hang up, just leaves his phone on speaker as he works through the song he was doing and then moves onto the next.  Pete’s steady breathing rattles through the speaker until Patrick’s phone shuts off.  When he plugs it in later that day a text message comes through, _come out a week early and help us get ready_.

Patrick buys himself tickets before going to sleep that night and for a second he forgets to be worried because if there’s anything in the world that can keep Pete’s head above water, it’s his hope for a future with Ashlee. 

 

+

 

Patrick, like Pete, wishes that Ashlee had agreed to hold the ceremony in Chicago; but even the heavy smog and soggy heat of LA doesn’t seem so fierce when the two of them greet him at the airport, Pete with his hair freshly cut and Ashlee in a long, flowy dress that hides the bit of the belly she’s developing.  Patrick strips it off her when they get to her and Pete’s place and this time there’s no question as to who missed whom.  Patrick figures he has a whole week to catch up with them before things get busy again but it turns out that weddings take a hell of a lot of planning and preparation, and Pete and Ashlee’s is the slightest bit rushed.  However, everyone from Pete’s mom to the florist Ashlee’s probably going to be sending Christmas cards to, judging from the amount of talking they do, is there to make it the best day in Pete and Ashlee’s life.  Patrick pitches in where he can and listens where he can’t, savoring the details because he may never get to do this again.  

Between all the fittings and rehearsals and tight smiles and phone calls that almost end in tears they make it to the day.  Pete isn’t supposed to see Ashlee but Patrick sneaks in to her room in the early morning to wish her luck and very nearly gets caught when Jessica comes up to help her get ready.  Then, somehow, it’s ten minutes until the whole thing is about to start and Patrick is a horrible mixture of giddy and nervous that has him feeling sick.  If Pete is nervous, the only way he shows it is through his impatience.  

“It’s not _that_ bad,” Pete tells him, the fourth time Patrick takes his hat off because his hair is sweaty already.  

“Fuck off” is Patrick’s instinctive reply, but he never really means it.  Pete just jumps all over Patrick, making the situation actually worse, and whispers, “you know you’re staying the night, right?”

Patrick bites his lip to keep from grinning too hard.  “I am?” he asks.  “Ashlee didn’t say…”  

“Yeah,” says Pete.  “We like, talked about it and everything.  Ash has plans.”  

“Oh,” says Patrick, trying not to fixate on that right now.  “Oh, um, okay.”  

Pete had cornered him the night before with a shitty plastic ring from a vending machine, declaring him the best best man ever, and it didn’t necessarily mean anything, but Patrick has it in his breast pocket.  This may be the closest thing he has to a relationship that’s for keeps—and isn’t that weird, because he’s never thought of it as a relationship before.  It’s just a thing the three of them do sometimes, and Patrick’s unsure of the semantics for the situation.  He’s getting better at not asking any questions.

Patrick cries a little bit when Pete and Ashlee get to their vows because fuck, Pete does look happy, both of them do.  The night is a party that goes on and on and on; it’s tempting to just stay and see if it will last forever.  It doesn’t (though it does go well into morning) and Patrick lets himself be chivvied out by a well-meaning aunt before letting himself back in to be with Pete and Ashlee.  Though the master bedroom doesn’t _look_ different, this is nothing they’ve ever done before.  He and Pete team up to bring Ashlee off time after time and if Patrick’s honest with himself, it’s some of the best sex he’s ever had.  That doesn’t stop him from feeling like an intruder in some stranger’s dream that wasn’t meant for him.  Pete keeps throwing out “I love you”s and Patrick wishes he was the one who could reply.  

He’s sadder than he should be when Pete and Ashlee have to catch an early flight the next morning; they won’t be gone for long, but Patrick doesn’t want this haze of content to lift.  He knows it has three days in when Ashlee calls him from some beach without Pete there and doesn’t say anything about him, just asks Patrick to tell her about his life.

No matter what move Patrick makes he’ll be letting someone down, so he doesn’t hang up.  He tries to call Pete later and doesn’t get an answer—maybe it just means he and Ashlee are okay again.  Then again, maybe Patrick is shitty at time zones.  He dials again and, when he hits Pete’s voicemail, hangs up and sets up a countdown until their return.  Haunted by an inability to sleep when he doesn’t know what’s going on, Patrick pulls out a notebook of his own he’s started keeping and writes.

 

+

 

By the time Pete comes back, Patrick is ready to start recording.  Ashlee spends some of her time with them but more in LA taking care of her own work and preparing for the baby.  “It’s going to be amazing,” Pete tells them all, but as soon as everyone looks away he settles back into an expression that simmers with anything but excitement.  Patrick hates himself for feeling that Pete’s easier to handle when Ashlee’s there too but the truth of it is that both of them have to work together.  Pete’s house key remains untouched night after night in favor of Patrick’s; Pete claims it’s because Patrick’s mattress is newer and therefore nicer, but Patrick thinks it likely has to do with a host of bad memories that Pete has stashed away in his Chicago place.  Patrick’s not sure his place will walk away cleaner, but perhaps Pete only needs it to work for right now.

They get an album, in between fights and bad days and attacks of low self-esteem and poor decisions.  Patrick isn’t quite sure he likes it but Pete loves it, and Pete loves so little these days that it matters more than it ought.  Patrick’s hopes for the release include a wish for Pete’s words to stop weighing on his shoulders once they’re out in the world at large.  Pete claims it’s magical how Patrick can interpret them but this time Patrick’s gotten too bogged down in the meaning, searching for double entendres or some sort of hidden solution.  Part of Patrick thinks he’s crazy—that both of them are—for investing too much in this one venture.  Pete calls it madness too, but not in the ugly way he talks about his own.  It’s the sort of madness that drives Patrick to greater distances and new heights.  Madness that is, however inexplicably, entwined with a bit of luck.  Patrick holds onto the last threads and prays that Pete is right this one last time; next time he’ll know better, keep his distance.

The album tanks.

That’s not the phrase anyone uses to describe it (except five hundred of their closest critics on the internet); Pete says it’s building up steam; their manager says they need to do more press and spruce up their public image; Ashlee says she loves it and everyone she knows does, too.  Patrick listens to these messages and then throws his phone aside and stays in bed because Pete isn’t the only one who gets to act this way, dammit.  Before anyone gets scared—that’s for Pete to trigger, not him—he calls Pete back and lets Pete interpret from the length of Patrick’s breaths that he is, in fact, alive even though he’s not feeling like doing much else.  Pete whispers a few half-sentences before he lapses into silence too.  If they were together they wouldn’t have to talk because Patrick could just make Pete hold him; but they’re not, Pete’s half a country away.  Patrick vaguely contemplates buying plane tickets but that would require him to check his email, so Pete’s the one to remedy that problem, and he brings himself and Ashlee and the rest of the band to Patrick’s door.

“Fuck off,” Patrick tells him over speakerphone, when he won’t stop knocking.  “Go the fuck home.”

Pete lets himself in anyway and then lets himself into Patrick’s bed when Patrick refuses to get up.

“Sorry,” he whispers into Patrick’s hair.  “I’m so sorry sorry sorry I’ll give you something better next time, Patrick, I swear—“

Patrick shakes his head because none of it’s on Pete.  The lyrics are amazing, like they always were.  It’s just that Patrick was reaching too far, thought he had something and now has to watch it fall apart in his hands.  

After awhile Joe brings them food, because he’s their friend, and then tells them to get their asses out of bed, because he’s a dick, and it’s an effort for Patrick to rally but they’ve got to do it, they’ve got to talk about press and music videos and tour specifics and everything else they can to make people buy this album.  Patrick drifts in and out of the conversation because they can’t make people like it, or want it, or want _them_.  He holds Pete’s hand tight, not caring who sees.  Patrick can’t do this anymore, he can’t carry them like he’s supposed to and Pete’s always stepped up in the past.  He’s the most reliable person they’ve got.  

Their meeting is short and subdued and all of them are various levels of miserable, but they come out of it with a game plan.  Pete presses a clumsy kiss to Patrick’s cheek before heading to the bathroom and Patrick wills his skin not to burn because neither of them are up for another serious discussion, much less a _what the fuck are you assholes doing and why has nobody told us_.  

Andy stares a bit, but he says nothing.  

“Is Pete…” Joe begins, obviously not sure of what he should be asking.

“No.”

“Oh.”  It’s not like Joe knows what Patrick’s given him; Patrick’s not sure on the specifics, but he knows he’s in the ballpark.  To fend off further interrogation Patrick pulls out his phone and asks Ashlee to come back, and with food.  Pete stays in the bathroom until after Joe and Andy have left, and together, Patrick and Ashlee only manage to convince him to at least come out into Patrick’s room so they can eat.  They eat on the floor there because Patrick refuses to let Pete get crumbs in his sheets and then crawl under the blankets together, huddled in the center of the bed for warmth, for comfort, for escape.

The next day comes anyway.

 

+

 

Patrick never expected tour would make things better, but he’d had a list of pros: live music is always better, there are always diehards, at least this way Pete can’t leave.  The latter is also on his list of cons because it gets grating to be around Pete’s self-pity; it’s not like none of the rest of them feel the weight of rejection.  But Pete tries to take it all on himself and Patrick tries to ignore it, spending time with Ashlee and Bronx when they’re there because they’re the best things he’s gotten out of this mess.

Patrick thinks that and then takes it back and then re-thinks it because if Pete’s going to spend his time withdrawing, he’s going to step in.  

The shows oscillate between great and lukewarm and Patrick tries to remember to breathe despite the fact that the crowds are less than enthusiastic about their new work.  Patrick’s used to playing his music for empty rooms and answering machines and studios where he can’t even hear himself, but the half-hearted cheers of the crowd are threaten to tighten his throat.  He steps his game up, plays harder, sings better.  No one notices.

The only difference is Pete, who responds to Patrick’s presence at last with an overwhelming show of affection (until he’s busy kicking Patrick off his bus for staring too much, or being in Pete’s space, or any of the other hundred thousand offenses that seem to have popped up overnight).  It’s a cycle of Pete needing him too much and then wanting him too little, only broken by Pete flying back home to see Ashlee, or Ashlee coming up with Bronx for a few days.  

Living in such close proximity, Joe and Andy catch on when Patrick crashes on Pete’s bus for the night even when Ashlee visits.  

“They better pay you big bucks for babysitting while they’re at it,” says Joe; Patrick laughs as much as he can and lets Joe think what he thinks.  When a new pair of noise-blocking headphones turn up in his stuff a few days later he thanks Joe, and then sets them aside with his unused laptop and a growing stack of papers.  Patrick doesn’t try to hide it or deny the fact that he can’t even bring himself to look at the words Pete’s giving him and eventually the stack stops growing.  Patrick doesn’t know how to even apologize for something that he can’t help.  

Another thing he can’t help is the way that Ashlee becomes more worn and quiet; it could be the traveling, or the parenting, or the fact that she spends too much time alone.  It could be the silent arguments that Patrick manages to miss from his side of the bed.  It could be the way even he can’t make her smile fully when he spends all day with her.  Patrick never quite gets up the guts to ask what’s going on because all he has of them is a plastic ring that Pete gave him where Ashlee’s marked in silver and diamonds; all Pete and no Patrick.  Patrick’s realizing that Pete isn’t even as much his as he’d thought.  

Maybe the trouble is that Patrick thinks he can do something, or maybe the trouble is that he can’t; either way, The Fight comes in the last week of tour, when it’s been too long without Ashlee because Pete will see her soon anyhow, and when it’s been too long without Pete because Patrick can’t very well sneak onto his bus when he never falls asleep.  He makes it, through sheer luck, after a show when Pete’s too tired to tell him to fuck off.

“Hey,” he says, after Pete’s paced and glared and thrown stuff and yelled and ignored.  Pete’s staring out the window, eyes glazed.  “Hey, Pete, c’mon, come to bed.”

“I don’t fucking _want_ to come to bed,” Pete bites at him.  “If I wanted to go to fucking bed I would have walked to my fucking bed that exists on _my_ fucking bus.”  

He snaps his headphones back on and turns away again.  Patrick goes to sit next to him.

“C’mon,” he tries again.  “Pete, you can’t spend all night like this.”

“Can,” says Pete.

“No,” Patrick says.

“Done it before.”  

That doesn’t make it any better.  “Well don’t fucking do it again,” he says.  “Come on, Pete you don’t have to sleep, I just thought we could…”  It’s not that he thinks sex can make Pete fall asleep but sometimes it takes the edge off.  Then again, Patrick doesn’t know how many prescriptions he’s battling tonight.

“That we could what,” Pete snaps.  “I don’t fucking need your—your _charity_ , okay.”

“It’s not _charity_ ,” says Patrick.  Pete’s always been good about the reciprocal property of sex.  “Stop being so stubborn, Pete.”

“Stop getting in my face,” Pete throws back.  “Just because Ashlee thinks you’re a great fucking idea doesn’t mean you are, okay?”

“Right.”  Patrick’s jaw is so tight that it’s hard to get the word out.  “Forgive me for misinterpreting the last few years of my life.”  If they were going to talk about what they’ve been doing, Patrick thinks he would prefer it on a few more hours of sleep and a Pete less on edge.  Right now he can’t tell the difference between Pete lashing out and Pete believing what he’s saying.  Either way, he doesn’t say anything more so Patrick has no excuse but to walk away.  He wishes more than anything that the buses weren’t hurtling down the highway—he’s burning with rage and hurt and embarrassment and he wants to be as far from Pete as possible before it all comes out.  They pull over at a gas station at three in the morning and Patrick slams out of the bus hard enough that Pete must feel it jolt through him.  

“What’s up, dude,” says Joe, who’s in a late night video game stupor.  Patrick just shakes his head and locks himself in the back bedroom and doesn’t think about Pete one little bit.

 

+

 

They have a shitty end to a shitty tour and Patrick knows without any of them saying it that they all need to take a step back for a little bit.  He has some producing lined up but it’s not for another few weeks; in the time being maybe he should go on vacation, get out and see some of the world and spend some more time with himself and only himself.  

Pete doesn’t seem to notice, or care, that Patrick’s sulking almost as much as him.  His sole concession to their latest fight is a muttered “sorry” as Patrick makes his way offstage after their next show.  Patrick opens his mouth to ask whether Pete’s apologizing for what he said or the fact that he said it, but he doesn’t want to know the answer.  

“Sure,” he says, and goes back to talking with Andy despite the fact that Pete’s still hanging around his shoulder.  He falls asleep alone and startles awake at four a.m. to find that he has five missed calls from Pete and zero unread texts.  His phone goes off twice more while he’s trying to get back to sleep.

Patrick assumes that Pete will keep pestering him until he gets whatever he wanted so he corners Pete at catering the next morning.  “What,” he says.

Pete looks shifty and downs the rest of his coffee.  “What,” he says back.

“You called,” says Patrick, “and I missed it, because I was asleep.”  

Pete nods and tips forward so he can lower his voice.  “‘M sorry,” he says, “I didn’t mean anything by it, I just…”

There are a number of reasons that Patrick hasn’t looked through any of Pete’s lyrics lately, and one of them is because he’s sick of trying to read between the lines.  “Okay,” he says.  “Is the coffee here any good?”  He ducks out before Pete can say or do anything else that he’ll have to take back. Patrick doesn’t want them to turn into a string of redactions.  

Pete takes the hint and stays out of his space for the next week, the miles and shows left finally down into numbers low enough for Patrick to count even on his lack of sleep.  Their last show isn’t so much a triumphant return as it is a retreat from a miserable situation.  Patrick shucks his guitar as soon as he’s backstage and makes a break for the showers.  

“Trick,” Pete calls after him, “wait, I thought we could…”

“Fucking wait until I’ve showered,” Patrick growls, fed up to hell with being _nice_.  Pete and whatever dumb idea or broken thought he has can wait.  Pete’s gone by the time he gets back, apparently settled in on his own bus and Patrick doesn’t press it.  Doesn’t want to press it.  Thinks he should maybe never press anything with Pete again because fuck, it never turns out well.  He should let Pete be the one with the ideas and the one who pushes to make them happen because fuck if Patrick doesn’t mess everything up eventually.  He knew from the beginning that only Pete was good enough to make something like him stick.  

“Patrick?” Andy sits down next to him.  “Hey.”  Patrick opens his eyes and registers vaguely that Andy looks blurrier than usual.  “Patrick, you’re crying.”

“Yep,” says Patrick, and surprises himself with the way his voice sounds croaky.  “That makes sense.”  

Andy folds him into a hug and Patrick lets the smell of his all-natural soap and the slight remainder of sweat calm him.  “Last show blues?” Andy asks, like he actually thinks anyone will miss this tour.

Patrick shakes his head.  “I think,” he says, “I think when we get back I’m going on vacation for a little bit.  I need to—to get away.”  

“Okay.”  Andy pats him on the back.  “Anything you need to talk about?”

Just thinking about everything makes the shame and hurt and anger bubble up in Patrick’s stomach again, so he shakes his head.  Andy stays there with him until they make it to the motel regardless.

Patrick doesn’t plan on sleeping but he drifts off anyway, on top of his laptop keyboard.  When he wakes up he’s been timed out of his transaction, but there’s just enough time to make the purchase before he has to stow his laptop.  Their tickets for the flight home put Pete next to Patrick as always; Patrick’s dutifully glad that Pete makes it on the plane, but not surprised by the glazed look he’s sporting.  Patrick’s not the only one who needs a break from all of this.

He doesn’t talk to Pete the whole trip back, courtesy of noise-canceling earphones and an actual lack of sleep the night before.  When he wakes up, Pete is asleep on his shoulder, or at least faking it to a reasonable extent.  Patrick doesn’t know how to shove him off without starting another fight.  Only when they touch down does he make Pete sit up.  “Stoppit,” slurs Pete, batting at Patrick’s hands, but he does straighten up with a horrific yawn.  “Trick, hey,” he says, snagging one of Patrick’s earphones.  “We should, we should do something.”

“No,” says Patrick.  “I’m tired, Pete.”  

“Well we can sleep first,” says Pete.  “A bit, I mean.  My flight to LA isn’t until tomorrow.”  Patrick vaguely remembers Pete planning it like that on purpose, possibly at Patrick’s suggestion.  For the millionth time he feels a wave of regret for who he’s been.

“No,” says Patrick again, standing up and taking the bag that Joe’s holding out to him.  Joe gives him a weird look along with it, but Patrick can’t do anything about that.  He slouches off the plane and to the baggage claim and out of the airport and over his doorstep, which looks exactly the same as he left it except it’s a hundred times more lonely.

 

+

 

Patrick’s sick of traveling and he doesn’t have anywhere to go, but he goes regardless.  He can hear the disapproval in his mother’s voice when he calls her from the train station.  “Sorry,” he says, even though she doesn’t put words to the tone.  He’s had enough of people not talking when they should, or not saying what they mean.  He hangs up two minutes later with a flimsy excuse and ignores the irony of his relief at not being called on it.  His printed-out tickets are just this side of too wrinkled but they’ll take him far enough.  The only seat left in his car is next to a twenty-something gum chewer.  It’s still better than any alternative.

Being on the move again gives Patrick a reason to be somewhat productive; he books himself a hotel room in Port Huron and then spends an hour researching the city so he knows enough to keep himself amused.  In his fraying sweatshirt and trucker hat, Patrick doesn’t stand out at all from any of the other passengers.  He’s nothing like Pete, who gets noticed the second he goes anywhere public—but fuck, Patrick doesn’t want to think about Pete; he’s here to _not_ think about Pete.  It’s too bad, then, that Pete is wired into his every movement: the way he opens up GarageBand five times and closes it right after he realizes what he’s done; the way he skims his email because he needs to know if they’ve made headlines (if Pete’s finally snapped); the way the track that comes up when he turns on his iPod is one of Pete’s goddamn finds.

Patrick gives it up as a lost cause and tilts his head back in his seat, using his hat to shade his eyes, and tries to take a nap.  He doesn’t sleep, but it makes him feel like he’s going to be all right at the end of all this.  

The girl next to him reaches her destination at least four hours before Patrick’s bound to and tries not to wake him up as she wiggles her bag out from under the seat in front of her.  Patrick gives up on pretending, opens his eyes and stands up so she has more room.  “Thanks,” she says, and passes by him in a wave of hair product.  He doesn’t wait until she’s more than two steps down the aisle before moving his shit over so he can have the window seat.  At least this way he can pretend to appreciate the scenery.

The train starts up again and Patrick’s phone buzzes for maybe the tenth time in the last twenty minutes. He hasn’t been keeping count.  _Yr not home_ , it says when he flips it open, then, _yr not picking up_ , then _comeon trick answer me_ , then _at least txt me so I know yr not dead somewhre_ , then _fuck yuo this isnt funny_.

Patrick never expected it to be, so he supposes they’re in agreement there.  He’s tempted, just for a second, to say something back.  Something witty and sharp and maybe the slightest bit condescending.  Instead, he switches his phone to silent and sticks it with his computer.  The distance doesn’t help him stop thinking but it helps him stop doing and that, really, is the more important thing.

 

+

 

“I hear you’ve run out on us” is what Joe says when Patrick answers his phone the next morning.  He didn’t mean to wake up so early but he wasn’t really sleeping anyway, and it turns out that the sunrise over Lake Huron is very scenic.  He has a few pictures to send home to his mom in apology.  

“Have I?” asks Patrick.  He didn’t—well, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, really, but Joe makes it sound so intentional.

“I think Pete went kind of crazy when he couldn’t find you,” says Joe, then pauses.  “Well.  Crazier.”

“Maybe he doesn’t fucking need to find me,” Patrick shoots back.  “I’m not just fucking—there for his entertainment, okay.”

“Hey,” says Joe, “hey, what, chill.  I didn’t say you were.”

Patrick takes a deep breath and lets it out.  He tries to emulate the early-morning calm of the lake, but meditating is not something he’s practiced at.  “Sorry,” he says.  Then, “I’m not in Chicago.”

“Yeah, dude, I think we all knew that,” says Joe.  “Pete kind of…tore the place apart looking for you.”  

“Oh.”  Patrick doesn’t know how to handle that because last he’d known, Pete hardly cared enough to talk to him.  

“He’s gone now,” says Joe.  Patrick doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything.  “Are you coming back?”

“Yeah,” says Patrick.  “Just.  Not right now.”  Port Huron, he’s read, has a lot of beach, and he’s barely seen any of it.

“Okay.”  Joe is about five hundred times more mellow than Pete.  It could be because of the weed.  Patrick’s never sure anymore.  “Should I be worried?”

Patrick takes stock of himself and comes up lacking, but no more than usual.  “No,” he says.  “I don’t think so.”

“Cool,” says Joe.  “Call me if, well, you know.”

“Yeah,” says Patrick.  “Yeah, will do.”  Then there’s nothing else to say, so he hangs up and puts his phone on the bench.  It stays there until two hours later when he takes himself to lunch and then on a walk through the downtown that isn’t what he wanted, not at all.

Patrick’s touristy stop isn’t very touristy after the first couple days, when leaving the hotel room for more than a half hour at a time becomes a hassle.  He keeps a running tally of the times Pete’s tried to call on the pad of paper by the phone and picks up all other calls.  He’s talked to his mother five times before he decides to go back home.

Chicago is the same as he left it, which is to say that Patrick loves it more than it could ever love him back.  It takes him in anyway.  Patrick sits on his third-floor balcony with too much alcohol to be considered truly responsible and gives up on not thinking about Pete.  It turns out that shots are a good excuse for tears when the alcohol is sharp enough.  It’s a good thing Patrick stocked up.

The next morning he wakes up on the floor, a crick in his neck and a his phone by the side of his head in a way that can’t be coincidental.  Patrick’s head takes a few minutes to un-fuzz (as much as it’s going to, at least), and while he doesn’t remember anything, he does remember that there was a lot of words thrown out about selfishness and fucking bullshit drama queen antics and immaturity and a need for meds stronger than anything they made.  He doesn’t remember who said what.  His voice remembers the volume everything was said at, though.

The bottle is still right next to him, and it’s not empty.  It would be so easy to take just a couple more shots until he didn’t have to remember at all—but that’s so like something _Pete_ would do, so Patrick doesn’t.  He does spend the day on the couch and then order pizza for dinner but he never said he was keeping score.  That night when his phone rings and Ashlee pops up on the caller ID, he even answers it.

“Hey,” says not-Ashlee’s voice into the earpiece.  Patrick’s anger had only been passive, the way he keeps it most of the time, but the fact that Pete felt the need to lie to him—

“Don’t hang up,” says Pete.  “Please.  I just—I wanted to make sure you were okay.”  

“Fuck you,” says Patrick.

“Yeah,” says Pete.  “Yeah, I got a lot of that last night.  Which, fuck you too, by the way, for not calling me until you were drunk off your ass.  And fuck you for making Joe be the one to tell me that you ran away the day after we got back from tour because you hated me that much.”

“I didn’t,” says Patrick.  He tries to figure out whether that’s true.

“Yeah,” says Pete, letting Patrick’s lies slip like he always does.  The both of them are too forgiving, Patrick figures, for anything to ever get dealt with.  That could be a part of their problem.  “Well, fuck you for that anyway.”  

A comeback at this point seems too derivative and besides, if Patrick cussed Pete out for everything he’d done, they’d be here all night.  He wants to actually make it to a bed this time.  “I’m hanging up,” is all he offers, because he figures it’s polite to let Pete know.

Pete doesn’t say anything, and when Patrick takes the phone from his ear, the call has already been ended.

 

+

 

Though he’d sworn that no more spur-of-the-moment trips were going to happen, at least not before he finished with his producing stint, Patrick finds himself on a plane out to Los Angeles the next week.  He’s fairly sure he’s no longer pissed at Pete—certain enough to say yes to his and Ashlee’s invitation, at least—and Pete is, from the sound of it, having a good week.  Not that his moods can’t change, but Patrick takes it as a good sign.  Pete is there at the airport with Ashlee and a little bundle of sleeping Bronx in his arms.  

“Hi,” says Patrick, then “oh my god,” because there’s no way Bronx should be as big as he is already.  His hair’s starting to come in finally, little blonde curls that are all Ashlee and hardly visible because of it.

“Right?” says Pete.  “Here, wanna hold?”  

Patrick actually would rather Bronx stay asleep but Pete’s already handing him off.  He’s heavier than Patrick remembers too and for a few brief seconds all of Patrick’s attention is focused on the child in his arms.

“Patrick. Hey.”  The hand on his back means that Patrick’s already missed a couple vocal cues.  “What baggage claim?”

“It’s on the monitors, babe,” says Ashlee.  “Here, c’mon, that one.”  Patrick lets Pete fight his way forward to the conveyor belt; he’s not chancing crowds like this.

“Everything been okay in Chicago?” asks Ashlee, like she doesn’t know about Patrick’s minor breakdown.

“Sure,” says Patrick.  “Here?”

“Stop lying,” says Ashlee.  “I swear to god, each of you is as horrible as the other.  Here’s been…rough.  Not helped by you running out on Pete, frankly.  I know you were stressed, but…”

“Sorry,” says Patrick; he’s surprised to find that he means it.  “I just kind of.  He wanted space but then he didn’t want space.”  

“Uh huh,” says Ashlee.  “So you enforced space by running off.  Very smart.  I should try that sometime.”

“I don’t know what the fuck—,” Patrick starts, then he remembers who he’s holding.  “Oh, sh— _crap_.  Sorry.”

“I think he’s probably heard every word in the book by now.”  Ashlee’s face is set in a way that tells Patrick exactly how rough things have been in L.A.  “Many times, even.”

“I still don’t want to be the one to corrupt your child,” Patrick points out.  He cranes his head to look for Pete but there’s too many people, all taller than him.

“You never seem to mind corrupting me.”  Ashlee leans in close.  Too close.  

Patrick’s not sure he’s up to thinking about sex when he’s holding a kid, and his brain is still trying to compute the change of topic besides when Pete returns, saving him from having to answer.  “Let’s roll,” Pete says, “before that one wakes up and makes a racket.”

The racket doesn’t happen until they’re in the car, moving all of two miles an hour thanks to a wreck uproad.  Patrick rocks and shushes and even sings a bit at Pete’s request, but Bronx isn’t having any of it.

“Here,” says Ashlee, “he probably wants fed.”  

Patrick passes him up and tries not to look like he’s thinking about Ashlee’s breasts.  Pete winks at him in the rearview mirror.  “You shouldn’t do that right here, Ash,” Pete says aloud, “you’re gonna cause more trouble.”  

“Hands to yourself,” she says.  “Patrick told me it was his turn.”

“Um,” says Patrick, because nowhere in the past thirty minutes has he done such a thing.

“I hate you both,” says Pete.

“You can probably join in,” says Ashlee.  “You know, after we’ve had some time to catch up.”

When they get home Ashlee’s already forgotten to make Pete wait so they put Bronx in his crib and crowd each other into Pete and Ashlee’s room, into bed, before Patrick’s had a chance to reacquaint himself with the place.  For the first forty-eight hours it feels like paradise; they come up for food and to take care of Bronx and once to walk Hemmy but aside from that Patrick’s too busy getting laid to think of much else.  

When they split the work between three of them, even caring for Bronx is easy—Ashlee says she’s getting more sleep than she has in months, though that could be from the intense orgasms—and Pete is happy, open, affectionate.  Patrick doesn’t feel a hint of guilt for missing this because it’s not just having his best friend back or having damn good sex, it’s the other part of his life that he’s been waiting for.  Though he knows he has a finite amount of time here, Patrick is perfectly happy to steal his moments where he can, lazing around with Ashlee while they put Pete on diaper duty and teaming up with her to give Pete a hard time after, then apologizing by cooking dinner and leaning on Pete during movie night, quoting along just because it drives Ashlee crazy.

They have two days of that and Patrick finds himself asking why he would ever want to be somewhere else.  The universe, on the third day, grants him an answer.

No one’s running on a full night of sleep because Bronx gets colic like no other, and Patrick assumes that’s why everyone is a little tenser, sadder.  It takes him a good two hours to notice that Pete and Ashlee aren’t actually occupying the same parts of the house, and that Pete’s holed up with his bad day hoodie.  One look at Pete’s face tells Patrick that attempting conversation would be unwise so he heads up to the nursery to find Ashlee.

“Hey,” he says, coming up behind her where she’s leaning over Bronx’s crib and hugging her.  “You okay?”

“Fine,” she says.  The tension in her shoulders increases.  

“Let me give you a massage,” Patrick offers.

“No,” says Ashlee.  “No, Patrick, it’s dumb and it’ll pass, just—“  

Patrick has seen Pete make girls cry and he’s seen girls make Pete cry and if he were to measure this one on the spectrum of how it made him felt, he’d put it more toward the wrong end.  

“It’s fine,” he says.  “Whatever it is?”

“Like he didn’t tell you.”  

“Sweets,” he says, “Ash. I haven’t even talked to Pete.  I don’t think he’s in a talking mood.”  Ashlee stills at this, and allows Patrick to tug her out of the room.  Bronx probably doesn’t need to hear all of this before he’s even a year old.  

“Oh,” says Ashlee.  “Well, when he is, maybe you could pass on the message that his _wife_ is not his fucking—babysitter or servant, or—I don’t even know what he wants from me anymore.”  

“Okay,” says Patrick, who definitely missed a few steps along the way.  “What’s going on?”

“Pete is going on,” says Ashlee.  “Doing his whole—you know what it is.  Refusing to go to therapy or take his meds or take one second away from his mind to tell me that he appreciates everything I’m doing, and meanwhile I’m stuck in the goddamn house because either Bronx or Pete needs looking after and guess who has to do that.”

“Pete doesn’t need looking after,” says Patrick.  “He’s an adult. He can take care of himself for once.”

“You do it too,” Ashlee counters.

“Not always.”  

“No,” says Ashlee.  “You left when he kicked you out, right?  One too many times?  In a way you couldn’t quite get over?”

Patrick assumes that Pete didn’t tell her the exact circumstances of their fight and he’s okay with not reliving that shame right now.  He nods.

“The really fucking tough thing about being in love with Pete,” says Ashlee, “is that everything he says about how painful and awful love is starts to become true.”

“Yeah,” says Patrick.  “Yeah, I guess it does.”  Which is absolute shit luck, because it turns out that Patrick is probably in love with Pete and love has never been something he can just turn off.  He lets Ashlee sob into his shoulder and strokes a hand through her hair.  He tries not to cry himself.

It turns out that commiseration over being in love with Pete makes for some awesome comfort sex, especially because Ashlee doesn’t even close her eyes and say Pete’s name when she comes like Patrick had half expected she might.  “I like you because you’re easy,” she tells him afterward.

“Uh, thanks?” says Patrick.

“No, oh god.”  Ashlee’s nose scrunches up in a giggle.  “Not like—I just meant, you’re not— _that_.  Like, sure you have your own emotions and complexes and shit that you can’t leave behind but sometimes you deal with them like an adult.”

“Right,” says Patrick.  He has a feeling that taking Ashlee to bed while Pete’s still sulking downstairs doesn’t actually fit that definition, but if she’s willing to overlook it if she is.  

“No, you do,” says Ashlee.  “Like, if something were wrong, you would tell me, right?”

“Uh, yeah.  Yeah.”

“Patrick,” says Ashlee, with a sigh.  “Is something wrong?”

“No,” says Patrick.  “I don’t think—yes.  Maybe.  I don’t know anymore.”  

“Oh.”  She settles her head on his shoulder.  “It’s one of those, huh?”

“Probably,” says Patrick.  “It might be theoretical.”

“It might not.”

Patrick sighs.  “It might not.”

“Yeah?” asks Ashlee.  She’s mastered sounding unengaged though Patrick knows she’s dying to hear.  

“Just…band stuff,” he says.  “Not that that’s a secret, huh.  You were there on tour.”  

“Nah,” says Ashlee.  “I mean—you’ll get past it, you know?”

“Sure,” says Patrick.  He crosses his fingers, though.  Just in case.

 

+

 

Patrick wakes up on day four to the sound of yelling.  Actually, he wakes up at the sound of Pete throwing something; the yelling is secondary.  Ashlee’s still loud enough that Patrick can catch some words— _not the goddamn housekeeper_ and _your son too_ and _you said you were okay with_ — all filter through.  Then it’s back to Pete, who’s _fucking doing what_ and _thought it was gonna be fine_ and _it’s not like you tell_.

Patrick probably shouldn’t be listening and besides, Bronx is crying, so he hauls himself out of bed.

The argument ends when the door slams; whether it’s Pete or Ashlee, Patrick doesn’t know.  He would love to hide upstairs until he was forgotten about but without Bronx to keep him busy Patrick realizes exactly how famished he is.

The path to the kitchen is blessedly empty.  Patrick gets himself a bowl of cereal because he doesn’t want to make anything (to take too much time) and eats it sitting on the counter.  He can hear himself crunching each bite in the absence that fills the house.

“You’re alive,” says Pete from the doorway.  Patrick jumps.

“Shit,” he says.  “You scared me.”  

“Oh.”  Pete stares into the fridge and emerges with a Perrier.  “What, don’t you want to say something?”

Patrick knows that Pete’s trying to pick a fight and he’s honed his senses and his self-control so he doesn’t fall for it.  “What would I say.”

“Plenty,” says Pete.  “Really, no judgements about the screaming and yelling?  Sure you don’t have any lectures for me?  Any pointed questions?  Condescending remarks?  I could put you on with my therapist.”

“That won’t be necessary,” says Patrick.  “Is there something you need to share?”

“Like you didn’t overhear it,” says Pete.  “What, did you run upstairs after you were done listening in so neither of us would catch you?”

“No,” says Patrick, “I stayed out of your shit because I figured it wouldn’t help to have me there.  What the fuck is wrong.”

“What the fuck is wrong is that maybe you should have been there,” yells Pete.  “Because you’re always fucking there when Ashlee needs you but the moment I want to do something you go to another fucking continent.”  

“Because last time I tried to help you made it pretty fucking clear that you don’t want anything to do with me,” Patrick snaps back.  

“Right, yeah, that’s why you’re in my house.  Why you woke up in my _bed_.”  

Patrick doesn’t want to say it but sometimes it has to be said, and Pete’ll get mad but he’ll—they’ll—get over it.  Eventually.  “Sure,” says Patrick, forcing his voice to stay calm.  “If that’s the argument you’re going to use, yeah, I did.  But it’s not like you actually want me there on a regular basis so, you know, it’s not like it’s my job to be there at your beck and call all the time.  I’d say that was for Ashlee, but I don’t think she really appreciates it either.”  

“What,” asks Pete, “is that supposed to mean?”

“If she didn’t manage to get that through to you I’m not sure anyone can.”  Patrick’s well past the point where he’s aware he’s being an asshole but what the fuck, Pete’s kind of an asshole himself and he deserves to have to deal with it.

“Fuck you,” says Pete. “Fuck you, Patrick.  I thought we were cool but it turns out you’re just—“

“What, another person who can’t live up to your standards after all?”  Patrick pushes off the counter and then realizes after that it makes him shorter than Pete.  “Look, I’m sorry for being another fucking _disappointment_ in your list, but have you ever stopped to think that maybe the reason no one stays around is because you’re the one who gives the first push?”

Patrick’s aware that his face is red, fists clenched, breath coming out in bursts.  The silence lasts for a second too long and it makes him even madder.

“No one’s leaving,” says Pete tightly.  He knows it’s a lie and he’s telling it anyway; Patrick can see in his eyes that he wants nothing more than for this thing with Ashlee to work out.  Patrick doesn’t know where he fits into that equation.  If he fits into it at all.  “There’s nothing wrong.”

“Right,” says Patrick.  “It’s all fine.  Where’s your wife?”

“You tell me,” says Pete.  “She’s your girlfriend.”

“No,” says Patrick.  “See, that’s not the part that matters.  We were fine just yesterday so if she’s not here right now it’s all you.”

“Get out,” says Pete.  Patrick doesn’t move.  “Get _out_ ,” Pete repeats, louder.  “If you understand her so much better than me then why don’t you two, I don’t know, go have a nice romantic afternoon in _my fucking city_ and pretend that I don’t exist.  Because clearly that’s what you want.”

Patrick swears the floor drops out from under him with the feeling that hits his chest because he’s figured out now that this wasn’t something they were supposed to work out.  “Pete—“ he starts, but Pete’s already turned away.  Patrick does the only thing he can: he flees.

 

+

 

A small part of Patrick had hoped that things would be better when he got back but Pete’s emanating a strong do-not-disturb aura and Ashlee’s upstairs in the nursery, looking at Bronx like he might hold all the answers.

“So, uh,” says Patrick as he approaches.  He’s too worn out for niceties.  “I think I should leave.”

“Is this one of the things that you’re not going to let anyone talk you out of?” says Ashlee.

Patrick shakes his head.  “It’s not.  Ashlee.  It’s not _you_.”

“Oh,” says Ashlee, and that one word holds the weight of her understanding.  “Can I.  Fuck.  Patrick.”  She lets Patrick cry into her shoulder and make a mess of her perfectly gorgeous yellow shirt, and Patrick lets her do the same to his faded tee.  It doesn’t seem like a fair trade.  Just another tally he’ll never resolve.  

“Can we talk?” she asks.  “Before you go?”

“It won’t change anything,” says Patrick.

“No,” says Ashlee.  “I know.”  

Patrick doesn’t want to press on that one too hard so he says, “Okay.  I still have to pack.”

Ashlee sits on he bed as Patrick gets all his shit together—literally; in a metaphoric sense, he’s nowhere close.  Ashlee’s silent for a good while, watching Patrick work.  He’s gotten nearly all of his socks together by the time she speaks.

“I get why you’re doing it,” she says.  “Is that awful?  I understand it, and not in a way where I had to look closely at your circumstances and then try to rationalize.”  She takes a deep breath.  “I don’t know how much longer I can…”

Patrick doesn’t really want to get in the middle of anything but then again, it’s not like Pete is going to talk to him anyway.  “I know,” he says.  

“But Bronx.”  Ashlee turns her attention to her fingernails, worries at her gold shimmer nail polish.  “We both love him.”  A chip of gold flutters to the floor.

“And we both love Pete,” says Patrick.  

“A lot of the time I love Bronx best.”  Ashlee doesn’t look up when she says it, like it’s some secret she should be ashamed to admit.  

“I think that’s natural,” says Patrick, backing into the bathroom to grab his razor.  “Healthy, even.”

When he comes back out, Ashlee looks down at her nails again.  “Then that’s the only thing.”

“Look,” says Patrick.  “Ashlee, I—“

“Sorry,” says Ashlee.  “That was unfair.”

“I want you to be happy,” says Patrick.  “I do.  Both of you.”

“You want you to be happy,” says Ashlee.  “A wedding is supposed to be the happiest day of a girl’s life.  After that it doesn’t matter about her.”

“You can still,” says Patrick.  “Pete can—he’ll work it out.  With himself, I mean.”  

“It’s not like I didn’t know when I married him,” says Ashlee.  “I loved him and so I said yes to him and all his stupid baggage and look where it’s gotten us.”

“Ash,” says Patrick.

“Sorry.”  She wipes her eyes defiantly.  “He talked about getting you a ring, though.”  

Patrick suddenly remembers the cheap plastic ring Pete did give him, shoved in the pocket of miscellanea in his laptop bag.  He wonders if he should leave it or if that’s just salting old wounds.

“Would that have made a difference?” asks Ashlee, “Do you think?”

“I think,” says Patrick, “that he gave me everything he knew how to.  So I’m really going to hate myself for this one.”  He rips off his old luggage tag and that’s it; his bag is packed, dirty clothes that they never washed mixed in with the clean because like hell is Patrick going to stall to do laundry.  “I’m sorry,” he says.  “I really.  Good luck.”

“Hey,” says Ashlee.  “Maybe someday, when it’s all better, we can…”

Patrick hugs her one last time and lets her kiss him for as long as she likes because he knows that won’t be the case.

“Yeah,” he says.  “Maybe someday.” 

 

+

 

Patrick gives Pete ten days.  He’s being generous by about three or four because he’s sat through numerous iterations of Pete’s breakups.  But he gives him ten because they’re more than just exes.  

Pete doesn’t call, so Patrick does; all four of them, on Skype, when no one else has anything to be doing.  After everything with Pete, it’s almost secondary, rote.  It’s not like there was a band without him and Pete anyway.

It’s no surprise that Pete hangs up first.  Joe and Andy stay on the line.

“Patrick,” says Joe, voice a bit scratchy, “why did you—did you really have to—to _Pete_ —“

“Don’t put this on me,” says Patrick, before Joe can figure out what he should be asking.  There are still some things Patrick’s not ready to talk about.  Never will be, probably.  “Don’t you dare.  It’s not—I’m not saying I’m _faultless_ , but—“

“Patrick,” says Andy.  “I’m going to ask this once and then I’m never going to bring it up again, though you’re welcome to.  You’ve been—tour you were on and off, then you left Chicago to get away from Pete, and last week you were in LA”

“So,” says Patrick, already calculating whether he has time to run to the Mac store if he accidentally throws his laptop across the room and into the wall.

“Are you…” Andy pauses; they all let him put his words into place.  “Is this your version of flipping your shit?”

It very well might be.  “No,” says Patrick.  “I know what I’m doing, Andy.”  

“Okay,” says Andy.  “Okay.”  

“If you’re right,” says Joe, “And I’m not saying you _are_ , but if you are…do you think we have a chance of ever, you know?”

“Yes,” says Patrick.  It’s a reflex answer because Pete is nearly engraved into his bones by now.  He takes a deep breath.  “I just think we need time.  And space.  And for Pete to work his shit out.”

Andy’s laugh sounds a bit broken.  “That’s a great thing to rest our hopes on.”

They hang up soon after, before Patrick can blurt out anything about needing to work out his shit, too.  He figures that after so long they probably all have some things—but his has become a monster, sharp teeth inside his brain and a growing appetite for despair.  Patrick swears it’s not going to win.  He has work to do.

 

+

 

If Patrick had known—

That’s such a silly way to start a sentence to him because if he had known anything about his future he probably would have stayed hidden in his past but at the same time he would still make all the same choices if anyone tried to reset him—

But if Patrick had known that his month was going to turn into a hell that wouldn’t improve with distance, he probably wouldn’t have booked himself producing work so soon after.  He despises not being professional and that’s the sole thing that keeps him functional for the first week-two-three after…

After it happens.

Then there’s nothing to do, a blessed break where Patrick supposes he can take some time for himself to get things figured out and to knock whatever’s out of whack back in.

He also has the option of drinking a lot of alcohol, which he does.  Sparingly (when compared with the way he has) and carefully (he’s no Pete Wentz).  But still in the way that gets him foggy-loose-okay and then hungover as shit.  He keeps that part quiet from everyone—still sends out email updates, texts his closest friends.  He tries to keep actual phone calls to a minimum.  He doesn’t log into Skype.  He usually keeps his calendar closed, too.

Patrick’s sung about growing up and thought it was something that happened in high school, or maybe after high school, when there are no more jerks to jeer at you for being something you’re not (or at least they’re easier to avoid).  What Patrick has to face now is the reality that he’s been living in a bubble of fame and music and the same group of friends that he’s known since high school, and that he doesn’t know shit about the real thing.  A part of him still yearns for the old days when Fall Out Boy was forever; and not only that, but indestructible, unstoppable.  He still has to believe that he (and Pete) will have a Fall Out Boy to fall back on when he (and Pete) get shit worked out, but…

It’s the but that kills him, every time.

Patrick, though, he’s not helpless; he may have grown up and made it big with three other guys and his guitar and his voice, but two of those things are still his.  It’s not like he’s stopped writing music, either.  It’s not like he has anything else to do with it.  

If an interviewer were to come, right now, and ask him how he was dealing with the hiatus, Patrick would have to answer that the music was keeping him together because it made him feel like he had something that he could do no matter where he was and who he was with.  It wouldn’t have been a lie.

He wouldn’t have mentioned the irony of the fact that it had been a lie until Pete wasn’t there to tell it anymore.

Patrick doesn’t talk to any interviewers because they don’t come for him, and he doesn’t know if (how much) they come for Pete because he is officially past his stage of caring about…about that.  He does get messages from heartbroken fans and then more emails and calls and Facebook messages than he normally gets in a year, but Patrick doesn’t have anything to say to them.  He buries himself in his work and when he can’t live with that anymore, talks to Joe or Andy or the few other friends who are smart enough not to ask or just plain don’t care.  Sometimes he’ll get a message from Ashlee and he hoards those away even though there’s not really anything he can tell her, nor much for her to say.  She just sends pictures of her and Bronx and an _I miss you_ :( that has Patrick crying all over again.  He never writes back, but he thinks that this time Ashlee understands.  If not, well, there’s nothing he can do.

Patrick knows that the other guys are still in touch with Pete.  What he doesn’t know is how much Pete’s told them.  He’s guessing it’s more than the nothing he’s said.  At some point Patrick figures he should get his side of the story worked out because people will need to know, but not yet; it’s still too soon to even start thinking about it.  He’s totally unprepared for the day he comes home and finds Joe waiting by his door.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about moving,” says Patrick as he lets them both in.

“Really?” asks Joe.

“No.  Maybe,” says Patrick.  “I was trying to make conversation.  I don’t know.”  His place does have some bad memories attached but it feels like a bad idea to say goodbye completely.  Just a break.  It’s just a break.  

“Dude.” Joe collapses on Patrick’s couch and lights up.  “This is some fucked up shit.”  

“Yeah,” says Patrick.  “So, uh, I don’t have any food…”

Joe snorts.  “Duh.  Go ahead and order us some then.  You know what I like.”

Patrick makes the call while Joe gets himself baked and then joins him in the living room.  “I came over here to yell at you I think,” says Joe.  “For being a secretive asshole and flipping your shit.  I know you told us you _weren’t_ but it’s pretty obvious your shit is flipped all over the place, so either you haven’t figured that out yet or you just wanted us off your back.”

Patrick can’t think of a response to that.

“Yeah,” says Joe.  “But you’re also kind of sad and pathetic looking right now, so I can’t be mad at you.”

“Thanks, Joe.”  

Joe shrugs and waves his joint in Patrick’s general direction.  “I brought extra.  If you want.”

“Thoughtful of you.” Patrick’s going to get a good secondhand high anyway so it’s not like it matters.   

Joe shrugs.  They sit in silence.

“Do you need to talk?” Joe asks, eventually.

The pot is already going to Patrick’s head but there’s probably no substance strong enough to make him say yes.  Joe hasn’t even said anything about Pete; he might not know.  “No.”

“Fuck, I’m glad.  Pete’s three-hour talking sessions are wearing me out.  I told him I’m not his goddamned therapist.  But does he listen to me?”

The doorbell rings and Patrick jumps up to get it.  “Food,” he says.

“Food,” Joe repeats.  “Good, I’m starving.” 

 

+

 

Joe doesn’t ask about Pete again but he does start arranging social time for them that’s shared with other people.  Sometimes “other people” consist of Andy, which is enough for Patrick; more often, it’s a whole group, some of Joe’s friends, some of Patrick’s friends, some drawn in by other attractions.  Patrick might complain more except the thing that ties all of them together is the Chicago music scene and it’s a nice bit of familiarity when everything else in Patrick’s life is upside down.  It provides plenty of opportunity for introspection, too, because if things were just a little different maybe he would be the stepping out from a long night behind the kit sweaty and high on music instead of the one sitting in the corner, trying to avoid attention as much as possible.

Patrick’s nothing if not good at avoiding attention, it’s the people around him who seem to bring it on.  This time, the lead singer of the band they’d just watched is in an impressively flirtatious conversation with a pretty redhead whose friend is leaning on the corner by Patrick’s elbow.  

“She’s the one who got me into the music scene here,” the woman leaning on the table says.  Patrick doesn’t know if her intended target is all or one of them, or if she even cares.  She’s the kind of woman who could pick someone up no problem but she doesn’t seem bent on it.  

Patrick doesn’t catch the reply she gets but the woman laughs, shifting just enough that her shoulder brushes Patrick’s for a second, her curly hair cascading over his arm.  It’s gone before he can react.  Patrick wonders if it would be rude to move his chair back so she has more space and settles on yes.  

The woman’s gone by the time Joe comes around to collect Patrick—not that Patrick needs collecting; he tries to keep the alcohol consumption to acceptable levels when he’s in public.  Come to think of it, that might be why Joe keeps dragging him out.

“Good night?” Joe asks.  

“Good music,” says Patrick.  “It’s fuckin’ weird, you know?”

Joe snorts.  “Yeah,” he says.    “Known some of those guys since I was, what, fourteen?”  

“’S weird,” Patrick says again.  

Weird it is, being back in Chicago and doing everyday things—groceries-cleaning-eating-writing-sleeping—without any kind of end goal.  Patrick’s used to down time in between albums and though he’s been thinking of doing something on his own it’s nowhere near the planning stages.  Mostly it’s still incubating.  In the meantime he has a life that doesn’t quite meet expectations, but is always out to catch him off guard—such as when he runs into the woman from the bar two days later.  He doesn’t remember her name (he doesn’t remember introductions, just the fact that she left right after her friend sealed the deal with the singer) she says, “hey, it’s you again!” and he makes the mistake of looking and of recognizing her, so then he has to talk.  

Patrick just wants his food so he can hone his skill of working on his MacBook without spilling on it (again) but instead he ends up in a conversation with someone he hardly knows in a takeout place that’s far from his favorite.  

He gets through five minutes of stuttered conversation by telling himself that he’ll probably never see her again, and then his order’s up.  When he says goodbye it’s with a small sense of accomplishment for having sustained a conversation, and relief that he doesn’t have to any more.  Patrick doesn’t consciously think of it as practice, but, well, it is.  The next time Joe asks what he’s been up to Patrick can casually drop that nugget in there to prove that he’s not a complete loser whose only link to the outside world is his stoner friend and maybe Joe will stop with the “hey Patrick you have to meet this guy, he’s awesome.”  

The fact that Joe is somewhat Patrick’s only link to the outside world is for Patrick to worry about because he’s beginning to collect a new ring of contacts in his phone and on Facebook so occasionally he’ll hear about plans before Joe loops him in.  Sometimes he even rouses himself to go, too.

They go to bars and they go to shows and they waste time all across Chicago, a pulsing group of twenty-somethings that hang around when they’ve nothing better to do and peel off for other occupations.  Patrick wonders if this was the suburban young adulthood he missed out on and thinks he doesn’t care for it awfully.  It’s nothing bad, but it’s not as good as the electricity of writing and recording and touring that Patrick had sustained himself on.  In lieu of that he tries to ingratiate himself with the constantly-rotating friends of friends and scene-famous musicians that hang around because it’s the closest he can get to his old life for the moment.

There’s a core group of them with few changes; girlfriends and boyfriends and friends-of-the-above switch in and out.  That’s how Patrick finds himself attempting to discuss, over the noise of the subpar opening band, the merit of Hollywood composers as classical artists with the same woman whose name he hasn’t figured out over the past few weeks.  He thinks it starts with an A—Alison, maybe, or Alyssa.  Notwithstanding that fact, she’s smart enough and fun, so Patrick doesn’t mind her.  He’s been counting down the days until her friend breaks up with the singer she’s dating—Patrick’s been friends with Pete, and even that didn’t give him a front-row seat to a relationship this dramatic—but he’ll be vaguely sad to see her go in the way he is when acquaintances go their own way and Patrick realizes that his friend group is smaller and less solid than he’d thought.  He wonders if it’s maybe by Joe’s engineering that she keeps ending up at the same tables as him, or standing next to him at shows; he might have to actually tell Joe to knock it off because the thought of dating someone who isn’t—

Well, the thought of dating someone right now is overwhelming.

It turns out that Joe’s engineering has nothing to do with it though because one evening, when the group is debating the merit of bar-hopping and Patrick’s trying to figure out how to gracefully excuse himself she asks, “Want to come grab some food with me?”

“What?” says Patrick, certain he’s misheard.

She shrugs.  “You don’t look like you want to go drink more,” she says, “and I like you, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“Oh,” says Patrick.  “I thought—“ that this was all something designed to get him to move on, but he can’t say that.  “I can’t,” he says.  “I’m sorry, but no.”  

She nods.  “Okay,” she says.  “If you change your mind….”

“Yeah,” says Patrick.  “Of course.  It’s not—I don’t _dislike_ you.”

“I should hope not,” she says with a smile.  “I’ll see you around, okay?”

Patrick actually doesn’t see her around for the next couple of weeks but he figures that’s normal, that’s okay.  Against all odds her friend is still dating the singer so she’ll come back some time and then she and Patrick can get on with being friends or whatever they were becoming and forget anything ever happened.  At least he’s saved the necessity of talking to Joe about trying to set him up with people.  

“Dude,” Joe says to him instead, the fourth straight time Patrick looks around for his normal conversation partner and finds her absent, “miss your girlfriend much?”

“What?” says Patrick, mind flashing involuntarily to Ashlee.  “Who?”

“Um, Elisa?” says Joe.  “You know, short, cute, actually gets you to talk?”

“Is that her name?” Patrick asks.

Joe just stares at him.  “Please,” he says, “Please do not be this much of a wreck, Patrick.”

“No, I just—didn’t catch it at first,” says Patrick.  “And then we were talking and after that I couldn’t just ask her…”

“And you didn’t think to ask anyone else?”  In retrospect, it seems sort of obvious, but Patrick shakes his head.  “You,” says Joe, “need to work on yourself, my friend.  Really, though, you’re not dating?  Or thinking about dating?  I guess you can’t be dating if you don’t know her name.”

“She asked me out,” says Patrick.  “I think that’s why she’s not here.”

“Right,” says Joe.  “I’m not used to saying this to you, but you are actually a huge moron.  Seriously?”

“Joe,” says Patrick.  “Drop it.”  

For once in his life, Joe does.  It’s Patrick that doesn’t, in the end.  The end of the night finds him in bed, scrolling through his phone to find a number he hasn’t dialed in a very long time.

“Patrick?” Ashlee answers after the third ring, voice sleepy on the other end of the line.

“Hey,” says Patrick.  “Hi.  Did I wake you?”  He glances at the clock—it’s past midnight, but that’s in Chicago.

“No, not really,” says Ashlee.  “Sorry, I dozed off. Are you…okay?”

“Yeah,” says Patrick.  “Fine.  I just.  I missed you.”

“Oh,” says Ashlee.  “Uh huh.  So what’s up?”

“Not much,” says Patrick, but obviously he wouldn’t have called if that were the case.  “Look, there’s this—god, the specifics don’t matter, but the other night someone asked me out and all I could think about was how she should be you. And I—“ Patrick’s throat constricts before he can go on.

“Patrick,” says Ashlee, just quiet enough that he can sense the disapproval.  “That’s not fair.”

“Fuck,” says Patrick.  It’s just like Ashlee to say that after months of emails, but when he thinks back, he can’t remember the last time a new one popped up in his inbox.  “You stopped writing.”

“I figured a few things out,” she says.  “It’s not going to happen, is it?”  It’s a rhetorical question.  Patrick lets it hang on the line because he doesn’t need to tell Ashlee the score.  

“You shouldn’t call,” she says.  “Now that it’s…well.  You just shouldn’t.”

“Sorry,” says Patrick.  For calling tonight, for not calling before, for not being able to stay.

“Yeah,” says Ashlee, and those are the last words he hears from her for a very long time. 

 

+

 

Patrick gives himself two weeks to get over the conversation.  It’s generous: there was nothing in it that he didn’t know, but it’s been long enough that he has to admit Joe is right.  So Patrick gives himself two weeks and buys a separate notebook so his words that rival Pete’s for level of dark don’t get too close to the ones he’s been turning into songs.  After that he tells himself he’s done.  He tells Joe, too, just so there’s no confusion.

“Good to hear it,” says Joe, giving him a once-over.  “Is that why the new shirt?”

“Funny,” says Patrick.  

“No, really,” says Joe.  “Good for you.  Very adult.”  Patrick feels like that’s a bit patronizing but frankly, he probably deserves it.  

“Sure.”  

He doesn’t have to tell anyone else because Joe is still the only one in their friend group that knows the slightest thing about him beyond his musical tastes.  Elisa, maybe, knows the second-most; when she eventually shows up again Patrick smiles and says hello because this whole thing was a little less bearable without her around  It’s hardly fair of him to stick quite so close to her but there’s something about the way she smiles that makes everything seem okay.  She doesn’t ask too many questions either, just the kind where Patrick can talk about the studio time he booked to start on his demo or the fact that his mom’s trying to convince him to go on a Hawaiian vacation with her or the fact that he’s started a kickboxing class and it’s oddly cathartic.  

“Duh,” says Elisa.  “That’s why you take kickboxing.  Maybe I should sign up—my sister’s coming to visit next month.”  

And so their conversations go (Patrick forgot how stressful recording was and he needs a drink, Hawaii is too sunny for people of Patrick’s complexion, Elisa’s sister hasn’t pushed anyone to violence yet but it’s only a matter of days).  Patrick doesn’t realize he’s taking them for granted until a friendly debate on the merits of Christopher Nolan is interrupted by an actual argument two tables over that ends with a thrown drink and Elisa’s friend running out the door while her singer boyfriend shouts profanities after her.  

“Oh,” says Elisa.  “Oh, shit, I should.”

“Yeah,” says Patrick, handing Elisa her purse and helping her into her jacket.  “Uh, I’ll see you later?”

“Maybe,” says Elisa, with half a laugh.  “They probably—you know how it goes.  Bye.”  

Elisa’s nearly out the door when Patrick realizes that she’s telling him there’s no guarantee they’ll ever see each other again.  It’s an astoundingly wrong feeling.  

“Elisa,” he says, running after her.  By the time he makes it outdoors she’s jogging down the sidewalk, yelling after her friend.  “Hey, Elisa, hang on.”  

“What,” she says, half-exasperated.  “Donna, come _on_ , just—look, she’s not going back in there right now.”

“No, I know,” says Patrick, inching down the sidewalk to keep pace with Elisa as Donna recedes into the distance.  “I just, um.  Wondered if you still wanted to go out to dinner with me?  Some other time, obviously,” he adds at the look of exasperation on her face.

“Are you serious, you—okay, give me your number.”  Patrick enters it into the phone she thrusts into his hands.  “I’ll call you.  Maybe not tonight.”

“That’s fine,” says Patrick, grinning.  “Thanks, uh, I’ll let you go, but thanks.”  

“God,” says Elisa.  “I can’t ever tell people this story.  I’ll—talk to you soon, okay?”  She turns half away from him.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Patrick.  “Bye.”  

He should go back in, probably, to make sure that everything’s okay but Patrick finds himself walking past the door of the bar.  His car chirps cheerfully when he unlocks it with his remote and it’s easy enough to pull out of his parking spot, prime real estate that it is.  Even his realization that he’s left his coat behind and he’s already halfway home doesn’t bother him.  He can pick it up later, or not; a coat seems a small price to pay for the relief that’s flooding through him because he’s starting to remember what it’s like when things are going somewhere. 

 

+

 

Elisa calls, but not before Joe, who’s recovered Patrick’s jacket.  “Smart of you to bail while you did,” he says, when he drops it off.  “There were, like, punches thrown and shit.  Stop smiling like that when I talk about getting hurt, what’s wrong with you?”

“Sorry,” says Patrick.  “Are you okay?  I asked Elisa out.”

“You know, I can still tell from your face which of those is more important to you,” says Joe.  “Good for you, though.  You had me scared for awhile there.”

Patrick’s laugh isn’t quite normal, but he tries.  “I mean,” he says, “we haven’t actually gone out yet.”

“But she said yes,” Joe points out, “so that has to mean something.”

“She asked me out what, two months ago?” says Patrick.  “Who knows, maybe she has a thing for guys who are totally a wreck.”  

“Or maybe she just likes you,” says Joe.  “But either way, man, you’ve got this one in the bag.”  Patrick’s too cheerful to even flip Joe off for that one.

When Elisa does call, two evenings later (“I figured you’d be in the studio all day or I’d have called you then”), Patrick almost forgets how to talk, he’s so nervous.  When he thinks about it, it’s been years since he actually tried to impress someone on a date.  

He takes her out for dinner (or she takes him—Elisa’s much better at planning, or at keeping a cool head) that weekend and end up staying long past dessert, until the waiter starts shooting them irritated looks.  Patrick pays the bill and wishes it were warmer outside so they could wander the streets because he’s not ready for the night to be over.  He settles for walking Elisa to her car, fingers entwined in the crisp breeze.  “Uh, tonight was great,” he says, because it turns out that words aren’t really his thing sometimes.  He hugs her just in case that helps get the point across.  

“I think I’m free every night next week,” says Elisa.  “And all of Saturday, too.  In case you wanted to know.”

Patrick’s very glad it’s dark so she can’t see his blush.  “Friday, then?” he asks.  “I’m in the studio all week.  You might not want to deal with me Friday night, actually.”

“How about this,” says Elisa.  “We go out for a drink on Friday, and if we decide to do something more then, we can.  But at least that way I get to see you.”  

“I can do that,” says Patrick.  “I’ll try not to stay too late on Friday, promise.”  

“ _Artists_ ,” says Elisa.  Then, “If that’s worked out, I’d like to kiss you now.”  

Patrick doesn’t really have to answer that one with words.  

He floats on the high of that kiss through the next week and their date next Friday lasts much longer than a single drink.  Patrick can’t believe his luck; he’s sure things with Elisa will fizzle out once she realizes he’s so much worse than the face he puts on, but by some miracle she keeps agreeing to see him again.

“I don’t even have to ask you about Elisa,” Joe says as they’re watching two of their friends set up onstage, “because you never look this happy unless you’ve gotten laid.”

“Joe,” Patrick admonishes, but it’s weaker than it might’ve been.

“Good for you, dude,” says Joe.  “At least one of us has something good going on.”  He glances over to where Marie is hanging out at the bar with some of their other friends.  Patrick thinks she’d be something good for Joe if he’d ever ask.  “Hey, Elisa should come out with us again sometime.”

“We’ve talked about it,” says Patrick.  “But she doesn’t want to make things awkward, you know?  Besides, we can deal with a little separation.”

“Most people who aren’t Pete can,” says Joe.  He clamps down on the end of the sentence as soon as it comes out, eyes widening in panic.  Patrick surprises himself by laughing.  

“That’s probably a good thing,” says Patrick.  Joe nods his agreement and then lapses into silence.  Usually this would be the place where Patrick asked about Pete, but he can’t bring himself to.  He’s not used to having to get information about Pete through other people.  Besides, Patrick hasn’t decided yet if he and Pete are going to be a thing of the past.  He doesn’t know what he even wants to hear.  

Patrick has a notion that he’s not as moved on as he can think he is when Pete’s halfway across the nation; if he asked anything, he thinks it would be whether Pete asks about him.  If he does—if Joe tells him—Pete must know about Elisa.  Patrick’s too terrified to bring that up.  

“How’s Andy?” Patrick asks instead.  “He should come out with us.”

Joe sighs.  “You want to tell him that?” he says.  “We’ve been writing a lot, at least.  Seems like we never get to see you anymore.”  

“It’s fine,” says Patrick quickly.  “Studio time’s been kicking my ass anyway.”  Recording is usually enough to deal with on its own so balancing it with a relationship that’s still somewhat new has been a bit of a challenge.  

“You ever gonna let us listen to those songs of yours?” Joe asks and Patrick shrugs, because he’s not sure he wants anyone to listen to them in the state they’re in.  

“Maybe someday,” he says.  Every second of doubt is a sharp reminder that he no longer has someone to decode his work for him and tell him if it’s been worth his time at all.

When he heads home that night he’s the same mix of tired and elated that’s his new standard of good.  He shoots off a _Miss you, hope you and your friends had fun.  Brunch tomorrow still?_ to Elisa and climbs into bed rather than staying up to work until he’s worried sick about the demo he’s supposed to be finishing.  When he wakes up in the pre-morning, neck stiff and teeth clenched, there are two texts.  One from Elisa, _of course, night xo_ and one from a number that Patrick knows on sight even though he erased it from his phone.

It’s late and Patrick’s eyes are blurry so he manages to not focus in on the text before deleting it.  It’s not any help when it comes to getting back to sleep, though.

 

+

 

Patrick makes the mistake of thinking he can ignore Pete back out of existence mostly because he’s too stubborn to do anything else.  His hopes that Pete will actually catch a cue for once are dashed with the texts he keeps receiving.  Sometimes Patrick accidentally reads them before he’s able to delete them ( _your being immature_ ; _trick trick trick cmon im sorry i am_ ; _joe sed i had to ask u how u were because he didnt want to b our go-between_ ; _i think hemmy misses u please_ ); it’s not that he doesn’t think Pete is sorry, but that he doesn’t know what the hell Pete expects to happen.  He doesn’t know what he wants to happen, just that he’s really not ready for anything that has to do with Pete just yet.  Pete, he figures, will eventually move on from his text messaging routine and give Patrick some space and someday maybe they’ll be able to laugh about it together.  Someday.

Patrick hasn’t actually mentioned Pete and Ashlee to Elisa because he neither knows how to approach it nor knows how to tell her without scaring her off, but the third time his phone buzzes during movie night, Elisa glares at it.  “Is it an emergency?” she says.  “Do you, like, need to take this?  Don’t say no because you think you ought to be spending the night with me.”

Patrick looks at the screen.  _patrick i want to talk but for real this time _.__

“It’s nothing,” he says.  “Here.”  He switches his phone to silent and puts it face-down on the table.  Elisa curls back into his side and un-pauses the film.  By the time they’ve finished there are five more texts, telling Patrick exactly what kind of a mood Pete’s in.  He sighs, scrubbing his hand over his face like he can remove those last vestiges of Pete from under his skin, and deletes them all.

“Someone really wants to talk to you,” Elisa remarks.  

“It’s just Pete,” says Patrick.  It’s the first time he’s said the name in months.  

“Pete, like— _the_ Pete?” asks Elisa, because of course she’s heard stories about him, hanging out with their group for as long as she did.  “Do you need to talk about it?”

“No,” says Patrick, and then immediately feels guilty.  “Probably.  I—can we do this some other time?  Right now I just want…”

“Sure,” she says.  “Whenever you want.  But if you can’t, that’s fine too.”  She lets Patrick lead her to the bedroom, lets him unbutton her shirt and mouth at her breasts while he’s teasing at her clit.  Lets him bring her off twice before they fuck, loud enough that Patrick feels vaguely sorry for whoever lives below him.  

“That,” says Elisa afterward, “that was so good, we should do that more often.”  Patrick’s still too busy kissing her all over to answer.  

He falls asleep curled around Elisa and wakes up in the dark of the early morning, aware of the trauma in his dreams without quite being clear on the subject.  Out of habit he grabs his glasses so he can check his phone; the only thing on the lock screen beside the time (4:13) is a string of texts capped by _imiss you i miss you so much we can fix it if you just would_.

The back of Patrick’s throat constructs and fuck Pete, fuck everything he ever was because how could he have gotten it this wrong if he’d really cared.  

“Babe.”  Elisa’s touch on his arm startles him.  “What’s wrong?”

“Fuck,” says Patrick, unable to gather his thoughts enough to answer.  “Elisa, fuck, I don’t know what I’m doing.”  

Elisa takes his phone from him and scrolls through the texts, which is more than Patrick’s done for Pete in the last few weeks.  She clears them from the screen .  “He’s been texting you for awhile,” she says eventually. “You two fought?”

Patrick takes his time replacing his glasses on the nightstand.  “Yeah,” he says.  “I guess that’s what happened.  Fuck.  Yeah, we did.”  

She pulls him back down and runs her fingers through his hair lazily.  “That bad?”

“Worse,” says Patrick.  “I don’t know why…why he thinks it’s still a good idea for us to talk.”

“Well,” says Elisa, “it sounds like he’s going through some stuff but he wants to be friends again.  And get the band back together?”

Patrick sighs.  “I…haven’t been reading his texts,” he admits.  “I don’t know.  But I don’t think I want whatever it is.”  Doesn’t think he can give it, because he’s still too empty.  

“Okay,” says Elisa. “So you two…you were close?”

“Funny story,” says Patrick, and then he tells her everything.

 

+

 

Patrick wakes up the next morning with a muzzy head, a fragile heart, and the feeling that everything is about to shatter.

“Morning,” says Elisa, rubbing Patrick’s shoulder lightly; he focuses on her touch and wills himself calm.  “I thought about making breakfast but I figured I’d let you sleep,” she says.  

“Sorry,” says Patrick, rubbing his eyes and groping around for his phone and glasses.  “Wow, we might have to do a brunch.”  

“Mmm,” says Elisa, turning back to her book.  Patrick lays there and breathes in the golden light of midday, hoping to reinflate his chest so it no longer feels like someone drove a truck over it.  Even with Elisa right there he falls short of his goal.  

“So, hey,” Elisa says, once she’s finished her chapter and Patrick is somewhat vertical.  “Not to scare you off, but I wanted to talk because…because of what you said last night.  Nothing bad,” she promises, when Patrick flinches.  “I just think…you and I are getting kind of serious, right?”

Patrick nods.

“Okay,” she says.  “Okay, that’s good, I just want to make sure that you’re happy with this.  With us.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” says Patrick.  “Other than the fact that you’re way too good for me and should probably be running off instead of having this conversation with me.  But you’re not.”  He smiles a little and wraps a strand of Elisa’s hair around his finger.  

“Patrick,“ she says.  “I mean it, I’m serious.”  

“So’m I,” he says.  “Basically, whatever you want?  It’s yours.”  

“I just,” says Elisa, “I guess I just want to know that you.  God, this isn’t going to come out right.”  She takes a moment to gather herself while Patrick absentmindedly plays with her hair.  “Okay,” she says, after a moment.  “After last night, it just.  Made me wonder if you were happy with just having me around or if you—if it’s going to not be enough for you.  Because we can work something out.”  

“Oh,” says Patrick.  “Oh, I, no, Elisa.  You’re great.”

“Obviously,” says Elisa, and Patrick flicks her in the ear.  “Really, Patrick, I’m not opposed to—to experimenting?”  

Patrick mulls it over.  “I think,” he says, “it was mostly just a—a me and Pete thing then.  And now Pete’s not, obviously…”

“Oh,” says Elisa.  “And if he is?  Someday?”

Patrick gives a derisive laugh.  “He’s married still, you know?  Doesn’t need me.”

“Is it bad if I kind of want to punch him?” says Elisa.

“No,” says Patrick.

“Good,” she says.  “If I ever see him, I might not be able to stop myself.”  

Patrick doesn’t suppose they’ll ever meet; if they do, he’ll probably be there to punch Pete himself.  

Now that the topic’s out, he can’t seem to stop talking about it: so many of his stories had gone untold because he didn’t want to talk about Pete and Ashlee but now he knows the two of them can’t do any more damage.  They can’t touch Patrick and Elisa, at least; now that he’s digging back into his past, Patrick has to deal with the Pete thing, at least a little bit.  

“Are you going to answer him ever?” Elisa asks, too smart to not know who’s been texting Patrick at odd hours.

Patrick shrugs.  “I want to,” he says.  “But I—I don’t know what to say.  What he wants.”  

“He’d probably tell if you just asked him,” Elisa counsels; it’s not her fault that she doesn’t know nothing with Pete is that easy.  

Patrick puts it off and puts it off because he’s busy; he’s writing-recording-producing-spending time with his girlfriend, who has somehow taken everything from the past couple of weeks in stride and not run out on him yet.  Patrick chalks it up once more to her being far better than him, and tells her to never leave him.  

“Well,” says Elisa, “sure, but what if a knight in shining armor steals me away?”

“Knights don’t steal people,” Patrick points out.  

“They might.”  Elisa rolls them so she’s kneeling over him.  “What if one steals you away from me?”

“Nah,” says Patrick.  “You’re not gonna get rid of me that easy.”  

“I better not.”  Elisa leans down to kiss him and Patrick arches into her.  She holds him down and rides him, and Patrick wonders why she’d think she wasn’t enough.  

“Love you,” Patrick whispers into her ear before he drops off to sleep. 

 

+

 

Patrick’s used to waking up to the sound of Elisa in his kitchen, singing along to the radio as she makes them breakfast.  He tells her she doesn’t have to time and again, but Elisa likes cooking; and besides, she says it’s worth it because he cleans everything up after her.  He lets himself doze to the sound of her chopping something and is considering the merits of breakfast in bed when he hears the doorbell.

“Coming,” he calls, climbing out of bed and almost bashing his shin on the nightstand.  “Pants, fuck, pants.”  

“Got it,” calls Elisa.  It’s probably either missionaries or girl scouts, and Patrick trusts Elisa to make the right call.

“Oh,” he hears her say, and wonders who the hell she’s talking to with that tone, until he hears a familiar voice say, “um, I must’ve gotten the wrong address, sorry.”

Patrick decides that getting to the door before anything bad happens outweighs the necessity of a shirt.  

“Oh,” says Pete, eyes widening when Patrick comes to stand by Elisa.  Patrick crosses his arms over his bare chest protectively.  “Patrick, you,—“

“Don’t,” says Patrick harshly, stepping out of Pete’s reach again.  “What did you want.”  

Pete procures his phone from somewhere and speaks to it as he spins it around in his fingers.  “Can we talk?”

Patrick lets out his breath.  “I don’t—“

“I’ll come back later?” says Pete. “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything.”

“Fine,” says Patrick; he can’t turn Pete away now but at least he has time to consider what to do.  He doesn’t miss the way that Pete reins himself in instead of reaching for Patrick again.  “Later.”  

Pete turns away and after a moment, Elisa shuts the door.  “Breakfast,” she says.  “Let’s go.  You need food.”  

Elisa doesn’t say anything else and Patrick’s throat has frozen up of its own accord.  He has too many thoughts to process, really, but he can’t seem to formulate a single one to put to words.  If he’d been living in dread, this was what he was dreading; the moment where he couldn’t put off Pete any longer.  He knows he could go out, do his best to dodge Pete, but it’s not a lasting solution.  They need to talk whether Patrick’s ready or not.

Elisa rinses the dishes after Patrick washes them and only after his kitchen is put back together does she turn to him.  “It’s okay,” she says, “Whatever it is, Patrick, it’s okay.  We’ll get through it.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.  He doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for yet.  

“I love you,” she replies.  Patrick reaches out and holds her, trying to calm his breathing with the familiar scent of her hair product.  “Okay?  Everything else is secondary.”

“Yeah,” says Patrick.  “Secondary.”  

“Good.”  Elisa lets Patrick go and grabs her shoes, her purse, her coat.  “I’m going to go now,” she says, “and I think you should call Pete and let him know that he can come over, and that you two can talk.  And if it goes badly, or if you decide you want me to be here, give me a call.  Okay?”

“Yeah,” says Patrick again.  “Thanks.  Love you.”  

Elisa kisses him before heading out the door, and Patrick picks up his phone.  

When Pete comes back, Patrick’s fully clothed and he’s thoughtfully moved all the immediately throwable objects out of his living room.  Pete doesn’t say a word as he walks in but he doesn’t hesitate in claiming his spot on Patrick’s couch.  Patrick feels his heart clench; apart from a few randoms that have been over when Patrick’s hosted parties, no one’s sat there in ages.  Patrick sits across from him, unable to stop himself from analyzing the way Pete’s curled in on himself.  Pete just stares at his phone.  

“Hi,” Pete says eventually.  

Patrick has to try twice before sound comes out.  “Hi.”  

Pete sets his phone to the side, then picks it up again.  “I, um.  I wanted to see you.”  

“Then that makes one of us.”  

Patrick doesn’t mean his words to come out so sharp, but he’s never been the best at social situations anyway.  Pete flinches.  

“Why didn’t you text me back?” he asks.

“I didn’t—“ Patrick can’t figure out how to say it.  “I deleted them.  Mostly.”

“Oh,” says Pete.  He doesn’t say anything more; Patrick gets a notion that Pete’s not interpreting the things he’s trying to say.

“I.  I don’t know what I should say.  I don’t know what…”  On second thought Patrick shouldn’t have moved the tissues.  

“So you don’t know any of it?” Pete asks.  

Patrick shakes his head and watches Pete pick at his nails.

“I’m sorry,” says Pete.  “Trick.  I am.”  

“Okay,” says Patrick.  It’s easy to believe it when they’re face to face, but no easier to process.  “You know that…doesn’t necessarily make a difference, right?”

Pete nods.  “It could?” he says.  “I’m.  I’ve been doing a lot of work.”  Patrick doesn’t know what to say to that, and Pete, as always, fills the silence.  “The consensus seems to be that it doesn’t matter,” he says.  “But this is part of it.  So here I am.”

“What,” says Patrick, suddenly angry, “you come back to apologize to me so you can get brownie points and then that’s it?”  He knew this whole thing with Pete was a waste of time, nothing that was going to offer solace or give him closure or—

“No,” says Pete.  “No, I, what the fuck, how could you still think that, I’ve been texting you for weeks.”  

“Oh,” says Patrick.  He desperately wishes Elisa were here to help him unravel the context and see the whole picture, but he’s on his own.  

“I guess,” says Patrick, “that we could.  Try to talk again.  Maybe.”  

This time it’s Pete drawing in a breath.  “And?”

“And what?” says Patrick.  “I don’t fucking know, Pete, because the last time I tried to talk to you my whole fucking life kind of fell apart.  So you’re going to have to give me a bit.  Okay?”

Pete sets his phone aside again.  “I thought…it’s been months,” he said.

“Yeah well,” says Patrick, “fuck you still.  For—for everything.”  

“Fuck you too,” Pete throws back.  “Fuck you for leaving, and for breaking up the band, and for thinking you can just ignore things until they go away because you know that doesn’t work.”

“Well fuck you for not giving me a choice,” Patrick retorts.  “You didn’t fucking talk to me about anything, do you realize that?  Do you have any _idea_ —“

He can’t even find the words to make Pete understand so he stops trying; Pete stares at him across the gulf of silence.

“Sorry,” Pete says again.  “I didn’t mean to fuck you over.”

“Well, you did.  You fucked all of us over.”

“Nah,” says Pete, with a hint of a smile.  “Give yourself some credit.  I don’t think either of us could have done it alone.”  

“It’s not _funny_ ,” Patrick snaps.

Pete levers himself out of his seat and goes to stare out Patrick’s window.  “I know that,” he says.  “Joe and Andy have a band and I have a band, but it isn’t ours and if you think I don’t feel that every fucking time—"

He breaks off and stares out the glass again.  “Ashlee thought we should take a break and I agreed because I was trying to do better, so she has almost full custody of Bronx.  She told me that I should.  Go out and figure out what I wanted.  But what I wanted has fucking passed so I’m trying to do what I can.  Okay?”

Patrick nods.  “Fine,” he says.  Pete wanders away from the window and flips through Patrick’s record collection, no doubt pausing at all the new additions.

“Joe said you were still writing music,” says Pete.  “Are you?”

That’s about the last thing Patrick wants to talk about right now, stalled as he is in the process.  “Yes.”  

“I,” says Pete, “I miss that part.  I think I miss that the most.”  

Patrick has to swallow a few times before he can answer.  “It’s weird,” he says, “doing it all on my own.”  

“You did most of the heavy lifting anyway.”  

Patrick doesn’t know what to say to that because it’s kind of impossible for him to imagine that Pete still holds him in such high esteem.  “Can you answer something for me?” he asks, a retreat from dangerous territory.  “What did you expect, coming back?”

There’s a moment where it looks like Pete’s actually going to say something, but then he shrugs.  

“Well,” says Patrick.  “I think.  That would be a good place to start.  But—not today.”  He’s never dared to think about their relationship beyond vague futurities once everything’s already back as it should be.  

Pete nods.  “I’m in Chicago for awhile,” he says.  “We should do dinner.  I’d like to meet your, um, girlfriend?”

“Elisa,” Patrick provides.  “I’ll ask her if she wants to meet you.”

“That’s—,” says Pete.  “Okay.  Fine.  Can I call you?  Or text?”

“Okay,” says Patrick.  “But if—I’ll ask you for space, but you have to let me have it if I need it.”  

“No more disappearing act Patrick,” says Pete, “and I’ll agree.”

“Okay,” says Patrick.

“Okay.”  

Pete collects his hoodie and phone from Patrick’s couch and starts toward the door.  Patrick gets up and then realizes he has no idea what to do; he can’t go for a handshake, but he doesn’t think they’re on hugging terms yet.  He settles for waving awkwardly.  

“Talk to you soon,” says Pete, shutting the door behind himself and leaving Patrick more problems than he’d started with.

 

+

 

Pete’s “soon” ends up being less soon than Patrick had expected, which surprises him enough that he actually stops to think about it.  For all his texting and refusal to leave without seeing Patrick again, it seems like he’s giving Patrick the time and space he requested.  That means Patrick has to actually process what’s going on and figure out how to respond, but every time he gets into it he can’t come up with a good answer.  He knows, logically, what he should do.  He knows what he would do if he were younger and more foolish.  He knows where both courses of action have gotten him.  Elisa notices his preoccupation with Pete’s silence and tries to fend it off with the suggestion that he has other things going on.  That’s what really throws Patrick, because Pete never has anything else going on when it’s Patrick.

Of course, Patrick never used to have anything else going on when it was Pete, but especially now that Pete’s back in Chicago, he seeks out busyness to avoid any temptation.  It would be too easy to pretend everything were forgotten and slip back into the same kind of friendship they’d had before but it would only be a sham of their former closeness.  Whatever Pete means to Patrick now, it can’t be that.  That would be a disservice to both of them.  

“You holding up okay?” Elisa keeps asking him, whenever he gets too caught up in the loops of what-if-what-if burrowing through his mind.  Her patience with the whole matter makes Patrick want to snap; she ought to be urging him to kick Pete out and never let him back; or telling him that they should only be the kind of friends who sporadically comment on each others’ Facebook posts; or doing anything but accepting the fact that Patrick still isn’t over Pete.  Because that’s the truth: when he’s tired enough that his guard is down, Patrick always finds himself wondering if he and Pete could possibly unravel the mess they’ve made.

Patrick doesn’t have an answer by the time he receives a text the next Friday night; _what about doing that dinner tomorrow? Can Elisa make it?_

“What does Pete even _care_ ,” Elisa asks when Patrick passes on the question; Patrick doesn’t have an answer, but they end up going anyway.

It’s an awkward affair.  Patrick’s aware Pete’s trying, but he also knows what it looks like when Pete is having a bad day.  “We can reschedule if you don’t want to go tonight,” he offers at the door, but Pete just takes a deep breath and looks past him.  They don’t reschedule.  Patrick feels his stomach clench in time with Pete’s fist.

He barely manages with niceties because Pete doesn’t seem to care for them himself tonight.  Patrick’s hoping he doesn’t push for a fight in the restaurant, though that would be just like Pete—especially with the way Elisa will barely look at him.  Patrick’s a jittery mess between the two of them, and even Elisa can’t calm him down because everything she does reminds Patrick how awkward this is.

Patrick has no idea what he orders, just notes that none of them ask for anything alcoholic.  The place is nice enough that Patrick is sure the food is good—and also sure that it’s probably booked a week out.  He doesn’t compliment the ambiance or the way that the waiters don’t bat an eye if they recognize half of what used to be Fall Out Boy at one of their tables.  Pete picks at his food.

There’s a moment where Patrick wonders if it’s his place to say something anymore and then figures that fuck it, someone has to.  “You should eat,” he says, nudging Pete under the table with his foot.  

“Don’t,” Pete snaps back.  

“Pete…” Patrick isn’t sure how to get across that all he ever wanted was just for Pete to be okay.  It would come across as a condescension.  Across the table, Pete tries to hide the fact that he’s about to cry and Patrick loses the thin veneer of patience he had left.  “This is stupid,” he says.  “I don’t know what good you think it’s going to do for us to meet here.  If you want to do this, we’ll go back to my place and order some pizza and actually talk like adults.”  

Pete squeezes out a smile, or perhaps it’s a grimace, and signals their waiter.  “We’d like some to-go boxes,” Patrick says, because Pete doesn’t look like he’s quite up to actual verbal interaction.  “And the check, please.”

After reassuring their waiter about a hundred time that there was nothing wrong, just something urgent that came up, the three of them manage to escape to the street.  Patrick doesn’t bother to check if Pete’s following him on the way home because he’s done what he can at this point and if Pete decides that he doesn’t want to try to fix things…

Well, Patrick wasn’t counting on anything.  Elisa’s still tense beside him the whole drive back; Patrick can’t figure out if it’s because Pete’s following them, or because he’s not, or because he’s back in Chicago in the first place.  When Pete’s headlights pull into a spot on the edge of the street, Patrick lets out a ragged breath.

“You don’t have to,” Elisa says quietly, touching his arm.

“I know,” says Patrick.  “I’m going to, though.”  He gives himself a moment before getting out of the car because this is what makes it real: Pete’s there when Patrick fumbles his keys before he lets them in, he’s there when Elisa flicks on the light switch, he’s there to hold Patrick’s food when Patrick opens the fridge and doesn’t have enough hands to rearrange things.

“Thanks,” Patrick mutters, taking the containers back from him and sliding them into the newly-cleared spot in his fridge.  There’s a high likelihood that Pete will forget his food when he leaves but Patrick can’t predict if he’ll ever come back and get it.  That knocks something else loose in him just when he’d thought all the pieces had finally fallen out, been collected.  

“You okay?” Pete asks, brushing a hand over Patrick’s shoulder before he remembers that he can’t.  

“I’m ordering pizza,” says Patrick.

If the restaurant had felt awkward, it’s nothing like the silence that descends on Patrick’s living room once he hangs up the phone.  Elisa refuses to make eye contact with Pete and Pete refuses to commit to looking at any one place like it too might reject him.  _You can just go_ , Patrick texts Elisa, but she catches his eye and shakes her head.  Patrick probably owes her a lot for this.  

“Look,” says Patrick after five minutes, when it’s become clear that no one else is going to do any talking, “Is there a reason you wanted to do this, Pete, or are we all just wasting our time?”

“No!” says Pete, though he doesn’t quite look up from his phone.  “I just, um, wanted to know more about who you were now.”  His eyes dart to Elisa and then away again.

“You want to know why I’m dating Elisa,” says Patrick.

“No,” says Pete again.  “It’s not…you can date whoever you want.”

“Obviously,” says Patrick.  He watches the possible replies flicker across Pete’s face, none of them making it out.

“I wanted to make sure your taste had improved,” Pete offers finally, a hint of a smile in his mouth.

“Well,” says Patrick, “That’s not…the highest bar you’ve ever set.”  

“No,” Pete says.  “It’s not.  Jesus.  Am I making this worse?  I don’t want to be making this worse.”

“I don’t think there’s a worse for it to get,” says Patrick even though he knows that there is one.  He’s just not sure if _worse_ involves a Pete halfway across the country or a Pete in bed with him.

“Well,” says Pete, “that’s kind of a common theme, so, whatever.  I can live with it.”  

“Your optimism continues to amaze me,” says Patrick.  

Pete offers a weak smile.  Patrick tries to give one back.  Elisa grabs Patrick’s phone to check when he called in their order and walks over to the window.

“Sorry,” says Pete, after a moment.  “I didn’t mean to ruin your evening.”

Patrick shrugs because there’s really nothing to say to that.  Elisa peels herself away from the window and crosses over to the door, opening it right as the pizza guy arrives.  Maybe it’s the fact that there’s food, or maybe Pete’s apology managed to reach Elisa, but she puts the pizza down in between them and then grabs plates (“Is he the one who gave you your horrible pizza habit?”) and hands one to each of them.

“Thanks,” says Pete through a mouthful of cheese and crust and pepperoni.  Patrick raises an eyebrow.  

“Elisa,” says Pete, instead of responding. “Elisa, tell me something about you since Patrick won’t.”

“I don’t even know you,” says Elisa, calmly claiming a slice for herself.

“That doesn’t—,” says Pete.  “No, you know what, that’s fine.  I’ll tell you about myself—" and he does.

 

+

 

Once the ice is broken Pete falls too easily back into the routine of coming and going at Patrick’s.  Though Elisa’s never expressed a desire to be around him beyond their dinner together she sticks around too, possibly so Patrick doesn’t have to face it alone.  He’d forgotten how nice it was to have someone else around when he came home and someone there in the morning when he wakes up too early.  “I love you,” Patrick whispers into her shoulder as he presses into her, and Elisa wraps her legs around him in wordless agreement.  A part of him wants to stay there forever and ignore the rest of the world, but that would be entirely too easy.

“You know it’s not just going to go away, right?” Elisa says, like she can read his mind.

“Maybe I want it to.”  Patrick isn’t sure the it to which they’re referring, but he’s probably telling the truth.  

“I know,” says Elisa, shifting him so she can lay her head on his shoulder.  “I can tell.  But I think you wouldn’t be you if it did.  You know?”

Patrick thinks on that for a moment.  “Would that be so bad?”  He’s made his fair share of mistakes in the past, and he’s currently learning a lot about pride.  A new him might not be uncalled for.  

“Well,” says Elisa, “since it’s you that I’m pretty in love with, it might be.”  He wants to ask Elisa if she thinks she could still love him, or maybe learned to love him again, if he changed, but every word lately seems to mean too many things at once.  

“Do you think I’m doing the right thing?” he asks after a moment.  It’s clear he’s not fit to judge for himself.

“I don’t know.”  Elisa pauses and Patrick plays with her hair while she gathers her thoughts.  “You know,” she says after awhile, “I don’t hate him like I thought I would.  Like I tried to, even.”

“Yeah,” says Patrick, smiling even though he’d told himself he wouldn’t.  “That’s kind of…normal, I think. But it’s okay.  You don’t have to.”

“I feel like one of us should.”  

Patrick rolls that one around in his mind for a bit before settling it by all the other things he’s telling himself day by day.

“Just,” says Elisa, “if he hurts you again?  It’s on me.”

“No,” says Patrick.  “No, it’s not, how could you think that.”  

“Because,” says Elisa, “I told myself I wouldn’t—“ she stops, rolls away from Patrick and climbs out of bed.  

“‘Lisa?”

“I’m fine,” she says, grabbing a tee and a clean pair of underwear before heading toward the bathroom.  “I just.  Need a moment. Okay?”

Patrick watches the door close behind her and gets out of bed.  It’s no use without her there too.

Though they’ve been slowly moving back toward something that resembles a friendship, Patrick is glad that Pete doesn’t show up that day, or the day following.  Patrick senses that they’re about to come to a point where they can no longer get by on small talk and shooting the shit like they’ve fallen back into by habit.  He’s been taking advantage of the extra time with Elisa all the more since he has to return to the studio soon—he’d thought, at one point, that producing an album was easier than actually making one; now he knows better.  He holds onto the lazy mornings while he can and Elisa never once mentions going back home.  Patrick hopes he can convince her to stay even after they’ve gotten this whole thing sorted out.  

Pete texts, a somewhat restrained amount for him that adds up to a lot more texts than Patrick usually gets from anyone, and Patrick responds to most of them.  Some of them Elisa intercepts, but since Pete never says anything about it Patrick just lets her.  He suspects it might have something to do with the fact that she sees it as her job to—to keep him safe from Pete, or something.  Which is really kind of laughable to think that anyone might be able to do that, but Patrick lets Elisa continue because it would be altogether worse if she felt like she didn’t have any say in any of this.  For her part, she gives Patrick just enough space when he needs it, and is there when he needs _her_.  

Patrick’s well aware of how lucky he is, and how much he owes Elisa.  A lifetime, maybe; and even that’s not enough.  

Heading back to the studio is good in that it’s both challenging and rewarding, but bad in that Patrick has to remember what it’s like to exist for large amounts of time without Elisa around.  He can’t even keep her updated just to hear her snarky comments and jokes, because he keeps his phone off when he’s working.  Elisa’s learned that by now so he usually doesn’t turn his phone back on until long after he’s home when he remembers that there are other people who might want to get in touch with him.  Therefore, he’s completely surprised when he arrives home late one night to something more than Elisa curled up with a book.

When he lets himself in, Pete’s in the middle of one of his rambling childhood stories—not the one he breaks out right when he meets people to entertain them, but one that he waits to tell until after he’s decided they’re going to be friends—and takes his time slipping out of his shoes and hanging up his keys before he walks into the living room.  Pete and Elisa have food and Pete’s sprawled on the couch, one hand leaning over the edge so he can make the appropriate gesticulations as he talks.  

“Patrick!” says Elisa, who can actually see him from where she’s curled up in his favorite oversized armchair.  “You didn’t text.”

“No,” says Patrick, pulling out his phone and turning it on.  “Was I supposed to?  Hey,” he adds to Pete, who’s rolled over so he can see what’s going on.  

“Hey Trick,” says Pete.  “Good day?  I was going to take you to dinner but then it was late.  We saved you some food, though.”

“Thanks,” says Patrick.  “Sorry, did I interrupt?…” his phone buzzes in his hand as it registers the activity it missed.  “I didn’t mean to miss your, uh, texts.”

“I thought you were ignoring me,” says Pete.  If you know him, it’s possible to find the hint of petulance in his voice.  

“Nope,” says Patrick.  “Just working.  Phone off in the studio.  You know that.”

“Sure, if I know you’re in the studio,” says Pete.  

“Oh,” says Patrick.  “Right.  Started this week.”

“Elisa told me,” says Pete.  “And she also gave me her phone number so she can answer my texts when you’re not.”  

“Feel free to ignore him if he gets too clingy,” Patrick says to Elisa.  Pete tries to throw a pillow at Patrick but it falls short by several feet; Patrick can’t help the unattractive snort he lets out at the sight.

“Fuck you, I’d like to see you throw from this position,” says Pete; and he may have a point.  

Patrick manages to squish in the armchair with Elisa (all discomfort overridden by the fact that he’s spent all day counting down the hours until he can see her again) as he eats his pizza, slightly cold but still the best dinner he’s had all week.  With Elisa solid beside him and a good day’s work under his belt he’s okay with admitting the factor that sits across from him with a too-charming smile and a myriad of things to say.  Everything is too unresolved for Patrick to start using words like _right_ and _home_ but he lets himself feel them because it’s so rare that he gets to anymore.  

 

+

 

His optimism lasts all of seven hours, until Patrick wakes up to the song that had been playing in his dreams and a discordant chiming sound.  

“Fuck off,” he mutters in the pre-dawn darkness that is his least favorite time of day.  His sleep-muzzy brain registers the sounds as, respectively, his _oh shit_ alarm and the doorbell.  It then decides that the best reaction is to go back to sleep.  

When the chime of the doorbell is joined by the chime of Patrick’s text alert, he groans and pulls himself out of bed.  

His house is chilly and Patrick feels exposed opening the door in only his tee and pajamas, but it’s only Pete on the other side.  

Patrick’s hand falls away from the doorknob and he blinks a few times, wondering if he’s actually awake.  “Pete?”

Sure enough, it’s not a dream; not with the way Pete’s fingers are drumming on the Starbucks cup and the way his hoodie is pulled tight around his head like he can use it to hide from the world.  “Can I come in?”

“Right,” says Patrick, stepping back from the door.  “Why are you here at…?”

He goes to check the time but his phone and his glasses are both still in his room.  

“I thought you’d be up,” said Pete.  “I’m sorry, I—“

None of the pieces are making sense in Patrick’s head.  

“Go take your shower,” says Pete, brushing back the stray piece of hair that’s been tickling Patrick’s forehead.  “I’ll make you coffee.  If you hurry you can still make it on time.”   He turns Patrick and gives him a little shove toward his bedroom and Patrick, not knowing how else to react, does as he says.

By the time Patrick makes it back to the kitchen Pete’s not only made him coffee, but a full breakfast.  He hands it over and leans against the counter opposite Patrick while Patrick shovels it down.  If he’s lucky, he might not be late to work.

“Why are you here?” he asks again as he puts his plate away.  Pete looks sallow, and only half of that is due to the fluorescent lights.  

“I just,” says Pete.  “I needed…”

“Hey, shh,” says Patrick.  “C’mere.”  He doesn’t have time to hug Pete but he does it anyway because sometimes there are things more important than professionalism.  Pete sinks into his hold and Patrick can hear his heart thumping if he listens hard enough.  He hadn’t realized how much he missed this.

“You have to go to work,” Pete says, shakily.

“Not yet,” says Patrick.  “Not until I know you’re going to be okay.”

Pete doesn’t say anything, and there are a couple of telltale sniffles from behind Patrick’s ear.  "Don't worry about that," he gets out eventually. "Go work."

"But—" Patrick starts.

“I’ve already made you late,” Pete says.  "We'll talk later."

"Will we?" asks Patrick.  Even with the increasing amounts of time they’ve been spending together Patrick doesn’t think they’ve talked, actually talked, since Pete showed up on his doorstep.  

Pete doesn't answer.  "Think about it?” says Patrick. "I'll see you when I get home.”

"I can go," Pete offers.  

“Just…sleep?" says Patrick. "If you can." He hugs Pete once more before grabbing his wallet, coat, keys.

"Bye," says Pete. It could be agreement, or a dismissal.

Patrick turns his phone to silent before he gets in the car and sticks it in his pocket. He checks it as soon as he parks and again as he walks across the lot, but there's nothing.  For the first time in a long time, Patrick doesn’t shut his phone off when he steps through studio doors.  It’s against all his policies but over the course of the morning, his hand keeps drifting to the pocket that holds it.  When they finally break for food, bathrooms, and other human necessities Patrick sneaks it out under the table just enough that he can see there’s nothing new waiting for him.

 _You okay_? he sends to Pete.  There’s no answer before he has to put his phone back away, and he hopes that just means that Pete’s finally sleeping.  The afternoon drags on and Patrick keeps reminding himself to stay calm, to not let this thing with Pete affect how he treats the band he’s working with.  He still rushes out of the studio the second they’re done for the day, but by that point he figures he deserves it.

Traffic is hell on the way home but he makes it, lets himself in to his place to find Elisa—and only Elisa—in the kitchen.

“Hey,” he says, wandering over for a hug.  “Dinner?”

Elisa turns around so the kiss he aimed for her cheek connects with her mouth instead.  

“It’ll be ready soon,” she says.  “Do you want to—um, Pete’s kind of asleep.”

“For how long?”  Patrick’s already calculating the benefits of waking Pete up to make him eat against the benefits of letting him sleep as long as he can.

“Since this morning, I think,” says Elisa.  “I’m not sure.”

“I’ll go get him,” says Patrick.

“Um,” says Elisa.  “I told him he could use our room?  He said it would help and…”

Patrick inhales sharply and runs a hand through his hair.  

“Bad idea?”

“No,” says Patrick.  “Just, you know.”  He waves his hand as if it could encompass the amount of history he and Pete have.

“I figured you’d just let him.  Since he wanted.”  

Patrick clenches his fist.  “That doesn’t mean I should.  Or that you have to…”  He feels like all this time he should have been the one playing the protector, warning Elisa off of Pete.  

“Babe,” says Elisa, pushing Patrick back against the counter so he’s forced to look at her.  “You probably should.  And regardless, I wanted to.  So I did.  Okay?”

Patrick leans down to kiss her again, taking his time with it now that he can.  He’s not sure if it’s an apology or gratitude because so many things are battling it out in his chest.  

“Hey,” says Elisa finally, “Go get Pete?  I made you actual food, that means you both have to worship me later.”

“Uh,” says Patrick, cheeks flushing.

“Oh,” says Elisa.  “Oh my god, that wasn’t… _go_.”  She swats at Patrick as he leaves.  The smile on his face fades slightly as he approaches his bedroom and steels himself to deal with a Pete who may be at his worst.  

“Pete?” he asks softly as he pushes open the door.  It takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness, but Pete’s form slowly comes into view, sprawled across his bed.  “Pete,” says Patrick again, walking over to him.  He shakes Pete’s shoulder and feels him begin to stir.

“’s goin’ on,” says Pete.

“Just me,” says Patrick.  “You get some sleep?”  Pete’s eyes flutter open and he grabs onto Patrick’s wrist.  “Elisa made us dinner,” says Patrick.  “Come eat.”  

Pete stays silent for a moment, but he doesn’t let go of Patrick.  “I think I should go,” he says eventually.  

“What?”  Patrick sits on the bed. “She made enough for you too.  I think she might actually kill you if you don’t eat it.  Or kill me, maybe, for not being able to make you stay.”  

“No,” says Pete.  “Back to LA.”

“Oh.”  That means if they’re ever going to have a conversation they’re going to have it now, so Patrick shifts the rest of the way on the bed and lays down so he’s facing Pete.  “You and Ashlee?”

Pete shakes his head.  “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to see me still,” he says.  “And she still has Bronx…I swear to God if she’s parading a string of guys in front of him—"

“Hey, don’t.” Patrick changes the angle of their hands so his palm slips into Pete’s.  “You know she’s not.”  

“Yeah,” says Pete, letting out a heavy breath.  “Yeah.  Okay.”  

“So,” says Patrick.  “You miss Bronx?”

Pete shrugs.  “I’m not going to get him back yet,” he says.  

“Okay,” says Patrick, who has done this enough times with Pete that he knows when to give up.  “So, what use is there in you going back?”

“Well,” says Pete in that voice that means he’s trying to keep it lighthearted because the other option is crying.  “I kind of came back here to beg you to take me back.  So obviously that’s over.”  Pete tries to pull his hand out of Patrick’s but he’s a second too slow; Patrick tightens his grip.

“Pete,” he says.  “Stop it, dammit, get back here.”  Pete stops trying to struggle out of his grip, which is a minor miracle.  “Did you ever think,” he says, “since you’ve apparently been thinking about it, that we never really talked?”

“I thought we wouldn’t have to,” Pete whispers.  Now that his front is broken, he’s liable to end up in tears at any moment.  

“Well,” says Patrick, “We probably should have.  Since, y’know, we’re not superhuman.”  

“Great,” says Pete.  “Thanks.  Any more advice in retrospect?”

“Get over here so I can hug you,” says Patrick.  Pete’s face ends up buried in Patrick’s neck, and Patrick rubs a soothing hand over Pete’s back until his tears have somewhat subsided.  “And come eat with us.  Please.”

 

+

 

Patrick puts Pete up in the guest room for the night despite Pete’s reluctance.  “You’re just thinking I won’t leave if I’m here,” he says, arms crossed as Patrick opens the linen closet for towels.  

“Guilty,” says Patrick.  “Stay in Chicago.”

“I told you why I’m leaving.”  

Patrick deposits a stack of towels in Pete’s unwilling arms and shoves at the sheets that are threatening to topple over.  “I don’t think you should.”  

“There isn’t a goddamn point—“ Pete starts, but Patrick lays a hand on his wrist and he cuts off abruptly.  

“At least we should talk first?”  

Pete offers the excess towels back to Patrick.  “That doesn’t mean I have to stay the night.”  

“It doesn’t,” Patrick agrees, but he leaves Pete a towel anyway.  “Do you need extra blankets?”

“I don’t need anything because I’m not staying,” says Pete, attempting to hand the towel back.  “I have my own place, I don’t need…”

“Please?” Patrick asks.  “Just a few days, Pete.  I’m not asking for that much.”  He shuts the door to the linen closet and walks to the guest room, hoping Pete will follow.  When walks through the door, Patrick lets out a sigh and leans back against the end of the bed.  “What’s going on?”

“It’s just,” says Pete, chucking the towel Patrick gave him on the bed.  “Why do you get to ask me for anything at all?”

Patrick feels the edge of his mouth quirk into a smile even though he knows Pete’s upset.  “You were the one who showed up on my doorstep.”

“Yeah, and I’ve given you plenty of fucking time to do anything other than graciously acknowledge my presence,” Pete snaps.

“That’s not—" Patrick has to stop himself from reaching out to Pete, because he feels like that would only hurt more.  “That’s not what we are, is it?  I thought…”

“Fine,” Pete concedes, “but I fucking told you what I wanted, okay, and you said no so maybe you should just let me fucking get out of here already.”

“I didn’t say no,” Patrick says, willing his cheeks to not flame up.  “I said that we should talk, I didn’t say anything else.”

“You didn’t have to say it,” says Pete, but he sounds less sure than before, some of the edge slipping out of his voice.  “What more do you want to talk about, Patrick?”

“I guess,” says Patrick, thinking back over the months where he would have given anything for this and the ones where he didn’t want anything at all, “I was just looking for some closure.”

“Well,” says Pete, “great.  Haven’t we fucking achieved that by now?”   

“How,” asks Patrick.  “Pete, we haven’t said anything about it!  You never—you didn’t even try to explain yourself, or tell me what you were feeling, or anything.  We’ve just pretended it didn’t happen but I don’t think I can do that anymore.”  Patrick hoists himself fully on the bed because if he has it his way, they’ll be there for awhile.  

“I just wanted to move on,” says Pete.  He won’t stop looking at the ground.  “I didn’t think you’d want to…to be reminded.”

“It’s not like I ever forgot,” Patrick says, which makes Pete look up in shock.  “Can you…sit down, at least?  And let me apologize before you leave?”

At first he thinks Pete’s going to walk out anyway but at last Pete crawls up on the bed so he’s sitting next to Patrick.  Somehow when he settles his phone is in his hand again; at least, Patrick notes, he’s not actually trying to use it.  “I’m here,” he says, as if to prompt Patrick.

“Okay,” says Patrick, “okay.  Look.  I don’t know what you thought about us…before but I was really fucking in love with you.  Okay?  And leaving was pretty much the worst thing I ever had to do but I didn’t know…I didn’t know what else to do and I didn’t think you cared and…”  He takes a deep breath.  “I guess I still don’t know if I’m sorry for leaving because I think neither of us knew what we were doing.  But I’m sorry that I did it like I did.”  Patrick’s staring resolutely at the bedspread because he’d sworn he was done crying over Pete but he can feel the pressure building behind his eyes.  Pete doesn’t step into relieve him, either, just sits there, silent.  So maybe this is how it’s going to end.

“You can go now,” Patrick croaks out.  “Fuck.  I’m sorry.”  

The bed shifts and Patrick is sure Pete’s going to walk out of his room and his house and probably never talk to him again but instead he feels Pete’s arms around his neck and Pete’s breath against his ear.  “Oh,” says Patrick; he reaches out and holds onto Pete.  

“’S gonna be okay,” Pete keeps saying in his ear, and “sorry, sorry, Patrick, I’m so sorry,” and “don’t cry.”

“I was so mad at you,” Patrick finds himself saying into Pete’s chest, “I wanted to hate you so damn much but all I ever felt was more hurt.”  

Pete makes a little noise at that one and grips Patrick even tighter.  “Sorry,” he says again.

Patrick shakes his head.  “’s’fine,” he says.  “You don’t have to apologize anymore.  We just.  It happened and now.”

“Shh,” says Pete, rubbing Patrick’s back.  Patrick knows when he’s being given an opportunity to not make a fool of himself and keeps his mouth shut.  “We were both pretty awful.”

It’s so true and yet such an understatement that Patrick can’t help the small giggle that escapes.  “Fucking terrible,” he agrees.  

“I would almost say I deserved you but you were still too good for me,” Pete adds on.

Patrick pulls back and stares at Pete.  “You can’t still believe that,” Patrick says.  “You can’t _seriously_.  Jesus Christ.”  Pete just stares at him for a moment.  “Don’t,” he says, when Pete opens his mouth.  “Whatever you’re going to say about how you’re not good enough just.  Stop it.  You know I think you are.”  

“I don’t know how you can still think that,” Pete says quietly.  “Even after…after everything.”  

“Well,” says Patrick, “somehow you do too.”  For a few moments the only sound is the two of them breathing.

“I guess,” says Pete, “That’s because you have this now.  And I…”  he casts his eyes around and Patrick lets him feel out what he’s going to say.  “I don’t want to tell you everything because you just started talking to me again,” he admits.  “I missed you.”

“I won’t do that again,” says Patrick.  “Unless—unless you need to tell me that you actually hate me, but I don’t think you’re going to.  Pete, I _know_ you.  I’ve known you for years.”

Pete shrugs.  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means you probably can’t shock me as much as you think you can,” says Patrick.  “Tell me?”

Pete takes a deep breath, and he does.

It’s a long confession, winding and brutal and Patrick ends up holding Pete as he talks through it all, but he makes it.  Red-eyed and slumped over with tiredness, he finishes his story at 12:38 a.m. and then leans against Patrick.  Patrick needs time to process everything before he can respond, but he doesn’t need time to know that how he feels hasn’t changed.  “It’s all right,” he whispers in Pete’s ear, even though that’s not nearly everything he needs to say.  Pete knows him and his fumbling words though, and hopefully understands what Patrick’s getting at.

“Yeah,” says Pete carefully.  “It’s late.  I’m sorry.”  

Patrick shrugs because he’s worked on less sleep before.  He’s worked on no sleep, and it’s not the most fun, but he can do it.  “’s okay.”

“You should sleep,” says Pete, pushing at him.  “Go on.  Tell Elisa I’m sorry.”  

“She won’t care,” says Patrick.  “She wanted us to talk?  And she probably enjoyed the alone time.”  

“Just tell her,” Pete urges, so after quelling the urge to pull Pete in for one more hug, Patrick lets himself out.

The lights are off in the rest of the house, but Elisa’s still awake when Patrick opens the door to his room.  “Hey, baby,” she says.

“Hi,” Patrick whispers.  “Sorry to keep you up.”

“It wasn’t you,” she says.  “Just couldn’t sleep.  How’s Pete?”

“Fine,” says Patrick.  “Staying the night, at least.”

“Mmm.”  Elisa walks him as he walks to the ensuite, fumbles around in the dark for his toothbrush.  “I didn’t think you’d come back.”  When Patrick’s mouth full of foam prevents him from responding, she adds on, “Do you think you should just leave him like that?”

“What?” asks Patrick.  “What else would I do?”

“You know,” says Elisa with a shrug.  “Make sure he knows you want him here.”

“I think I got that through to him,” Patrick says.  “I need light, so I’m gonna close the door for a few?”  As he finishes preparing for bed he keeps rolling Pete’s words over in his mind and wondering if Elisa’s right, if Pete needs more than Patrick’s giving him.  He hasn’t gotten any answers by the time he lets himself back into the bedroom.

“So you’re going back?” asks Elisa as Patrick gropes around for his pajamas.  

“What?” says Patrick.  “I’m going to bed.”

“Yeah,” says Elisa.  “With Pete?”

“Elisa.”  Patrick sits down on the edge of their bed.  “I can’t.  Pete…told me he came back because he wanted me to—wanted us to.  To do what we were doing before.”  

“Oh,” says Elisa.  “So now he wants to leave because he thinks he doesn’t have a chance?”

“I guess.”  Patrick takes his glasses off and reaches for his phone charger, then swears when it’s not where it’s supposed to be.

“So don’t you think you should let him know that he’s wrong?” Elisa asks, sitting up and scooting close.  

Patrick jerks his head around.  “I’m not—“

“Shh,” says Elisa, grabbing his hand.  “You’re not making a final call or anything, you know?  But I told you we could try it.”  While Patrick’s still too shocked to do anything much, Elisa reaches around him and finds the cord he was looking for.  “Did you tell him that part?”

“I—what— _no_ ,” says Patrick.  “We hardly even talked about that.”  His hands are shaking too much to plug in his phone and Patrick forces himself to put it aside and take a deep breath.  “Do you think we should?”

“It’s your call, babe,” she says.  “But I think if you don’t tell him soon, you’re never going to get to.”  

Patrick’s acting on reflex when he leans into kiss Elisa, but it’s like she knew it was coming.  He feels desperate, holding onto her like she’s going to run away at any moment.  “Shh,” Elisa mutters into his lips.  “Breathe, Patrick.”  

“Love you,” he says back.

“I know.”  

Patrick takes a few more moments to remind himself of the way Elisa’s smile feels on his lips before he breaks the kiss.  “So, um…”

“Go,” she says.  “Go if that’s what you want.  And I’ll see you tomorrow?  I would tell you it might be a late day for me, but I suppose you’ll be later.”  

“I’ll try not to,” says Patrick.  “I—thank you.  I love you.”  After one last kiss, he grabs his phone and charger and glasses and lets himself out, closing the door neatly behind him.

Patrick’s heart pounds as he approaches Pete’s room—Pete could still say no to him, could change his mind at any moment.  On top of that, he has no idea what he’s supposed to do.  “Pete?” he asks, tapping lightly on the door.

Pete opens it, stripped out of his tee, and Patrick tries not to stare too obviously.

“What’s up?” Pete asks, when Patrick can’t find any words.

“Elisa sent me back to stay with you tonight,” he says.  “If that’s okay with you?”

Pete’s face is hard to read because emotions flit across it so quickly, but Pete steps back and lets him in.  “I was just getting ready for bed.”

“Take your time,” says Patrick, at last getting his phone hooked into a power source and double-checking his alarm.  “I’m just gonna—“ he yawns wide enough for his jaw to crack.

“God, go to bed already,” says Pete.  “I’ll be done in a sec, I swear.”  

Patrick settles in, not quite used to the feel of the guest room pillows, and closes his eyes.  A few moments later he hears the toilet down the hallway flush and then footsteps, the rustle of fabric, the light flicking off.  Pete climbing into bed.  “Sorry if—" Patrick tries, but finds himself cut off again by a yawn, “—you weren’t gonna sleep right now.  Kinda had a day of it.”

“It’s fine,” says Pete.  “Um, Elisa’s not mad at you, right?”

Patrick cracks his eyes to see Pete staring at him with a look of concern.  “She’s not mad,” he reassures Pete.  It’s muscle memory to scoot closer and Patrick’s halfway there before he realizes he shouldn’t.  

Pete notices, of course.  “Are you okay?  Do you…need anything?”

“I think I want to kiss you.”  The words are out of Patrick’s mouth before he knows he’s going to say them.  Pete’s sharp gasp of surprise perfectly illustrates his thoughts and he frantically tries to give them an out.  “If that’s.  Okay with you?”

“Patrick,” says Pete, “Jesus.  Don’t mess with me.”  

“I’m not,” says Patrick, then reconsiders.  “I don’t think I am.  I just want to…to know.”  

“To know?”  Apparently being tired makes Patrick even worse at explaining himself.

“If we still?” he offers.  When Pete doesn’t finish his thought for him, Patrick wracks his brains for a thought that’s already whole.  “You came back to…to be us again,” he says.  “I just thought before we made any decisions we should see…”  

“Oh.”  Pete lets out a huff of breath.  “So you’re just here trying out your options.”

Patrick shakes his head.  “Just thought you might want to,” he says.  “But that’s okay.”  He lets his eyes drift shut again because he’s tired, too tired to be having this conversation—probably he shouldn’t have asked Pete anything at all.  But a few seconds later one of Pete’s hands curls around his arm and the other tilts Patrick’s head up and Patrick nearly forgets to breathe.

He’s memorized every feeling of Pete’s lips against his, at first a benediction and later a curse; it turns out the memory is nothing compared to Pete’s mouth moving cautious against his, tasting faintly of the toothpaste he’d found in Patrick’s guest bathroom.  When Patrick’s hand curls around his neck, Pete’s less cautious but no less gentle.  Either of them, Patrick thinks, could push just a little bit and their kisses would become more intense, gain a direction, but neither of them do.  Patrick’s glad.  They probably shouldn’t do it like that.  All the same, when Pete’s kisses slow, when he eventually kisses Patrick’s nose (then his cheek, then his ear), Patrick finds himself wanting more.

“Thanks,” he forces himself to whisper, voice shaky on the word.

Pete just kisses his forehead and accepts Patrick’s arms around him as a consequence.  “Sleep?” he asks  

Patrick tries to respond but he can’t find the words before he drops off. 

 

+

 

As Elisa had predicted, Patrick pulls another late night at work even though he’s been trying to cut back, and almost gets pulled over for speeding on his way home.  It’s with relief that he lets himself in and finds Elisa perched at the bar with a glass of wine as she talks to Pete.  Rather than interrupt, Patrick hugs her from behind and then steals her drink.  He doesn’t know a lot about wine, but whatever’s in her glass is delicious.  He takes another sip

“I’d get you some, but Pete won’t let me into the kitchen,” Elisa says.  

“She keeps trying to help,” says Pete.  “Even after I told her I was doing dinner.”  

“Hm,” says Patrick.  “Sounds like Elisa.”  Because he hasn’t been kicked out of anywhere yet, he crosses into the kitchen, pours himself a glass, and tops Elisa’s off.  “More for you, Pete?”

“I’m good for now,” says Pete.  “Ten minutes until food sound good to you?”

“Is it a fancy sort of dinner?” asks Patrick, “Or can I go put on some sweatpants.”  

Pete looks down at his outfit, which consists of a pair of basketball shorts and a ratty tee that he might have stolen from one of Patrick’s drawers.  

“Good point,” says Patrick.

Since they’re not trying to be formal anyway, they eat on the couch, Patrick sandwiched between Pete and Elisa.  If the wine is delicious the food is even better, and Patrick overindulges on both.  “I’m cutting you off,” Pete says, the third—fourth? time Patrick reaches for the wine bottle, but eventually he hands it over.  Patrick, who’s noticing a growing tendency of his to giggle at things that aren’t remotely funny, agrees, in theory.  On the other hand, it’s damn good wine.  

Between the three of them they put the leftovers in the fridge, finish off the second bottle, and restore Patrick’s kitchen to cleanliness.  “I’d better head out,” says Pete, before Patrick can think of an excuse for him to stay.

“What, no, you don’t have to,” says Patrick.  “We have room.  We can—”  he fumbles around for something that would keep Pete entertained awhile longer.  

“I should go.  Elisa deserves to have you to herself for the night.”  Pete is firm on that.  “We can do this again soon?  But I don’t want to impose.”  

As much as Patrick wants to insist that it wouldn’t be an imposition, he gets the feeling Pete’s not quite saying everything—that he’s really leaving because they’re still too new and unsure, and he doesn’t want to break anything.  “Okay,” says Patrick, trying not to sulk too obviously.  “But you’re not flying back to LA?”

“Nah, might as well stick around for a while longer.”  Pete sounds too casual, and that’s how Patrick knows he means it.  “So I’ll see you?”

“You better text me,” says Elisa.  “Work is boring when Patrick’s in the studio.”  Pete nods his agreement and Elisa hugs him and kisses his cheek.  “Thanks for dinner.”

“Anytime,” says Pete.  “I figure we’re even now, since you let me steal Patrick for the night?”

Elisa laughs at that.  “I’m willing to bargain if you keep us well fed,” she says.

“Well,” says Pete turning to Patrick.  “Have a good week?  Don’t work too late.  And don’t order takeout tomorrow, you have enough leftovers for another night.”  

“Don’t tell me what to do,” says Patrick, a smile tugging at his lips.  “Thanks for looking out for us.”  Pete is patient when Patrick grips him tight.  Patrick’s just lightheaded enough from the wine that it seems like a good idea to tilt his head up and brush his mouth gently against Pete’s.  If he has a chance to re-learn every single touch of Pete’s he wants to make a thorough catalog.  “Night,” he whispers when he lets Pete go.  

Pete fumbles with his jacket when he turns to go.  After the door’s shut behind him, Elisa says, “So I guess you both decided yes, then.”

“Yeah,” says Patrick.  “I think, yeah, we talked a bit but…not about that.  We’re just kind of figuring it out?  I guess I never asked.”  Pete’s the type of person to have schemata in his head as soon as he makes a move toward anything, so Patrick supposes he’d known exactly what he wanted the moment he sent off that first text.  

“Well,” says Elisa, “It’s not like any of this came up the first time you asked me out, you know?  It was just a date.  But we liked it enough to figure it out.”  

Patrick grins at the memory of that night.  “I think I was mostly afraid you were going to tell me you’d never even liked me?” he says.  “Or that I was going to get, like, punched for my bad timing.”

“It was pretty awful,” Elisa agrees.  “But if I punched you, you probably would’ve taken it back.”  

“Then I’m glad you didn’t.”  Patrick pushes Elisa back against the counter so he can kiss her.

“How much of this is you being handsy because of the wine?” she asks, “and how much is actually gonna have some payoff here.”

“All payoff,” says Patrick, one hand playing at the hem of her shirt.  “Make it up to you for last night?  Just tell me what you want.”  

Elisa puts both hands on his shoulders until he lowers to his knees.  “Make it good,” she says.

Patrick divests Elisa of her pants, hands lingering on her legs longer than necessary.  “So beautiful,” he tells her, kissing her knee, her thigh, her hip.  Elisa only takes so much teasing before she gets impatient; Patrick draws out the foreplay as long as he can before she swears in desperation.  “I got you,” he says, and proceeds to lick and suck at her clit until she’s breathless with it.  It’s too short a time before her first orgasm trembles through her so Patrick backs off just a bit, lets her calm down before going for round two, sliding two fingers in her in time with his tongue.  

“God, you’re so good at that,” she gasps out after he brings her off for the second time.  “C’mere, c’mere, I want you to fuck me.”  Patrick accepts her help up but gets distracted kissing her, so it’s Elisa who pulls his shirt off and helps him step out of his pants.  “Patrick,” she says, pushing him back so he’ll focus, “ _please_.”  

Patrick thrusts into her, desperate enough that setting a rhythm proves impossible.  “Fuck,” he grunts, the feeling too intense for coherent thought.  His fingers play at Elisa, trying to draw a third orgasm out of her before his hits, but there’s not enough time before he can’t hold back anymore, snapping his hips forward as he comes.  “God, oh, god,” he gasps out.  “‘m sorry.”

Elisa’s hand rests on his wrist where he works at her and soon enough she grabs it tight, bucking into Patrick’s hand.  “Fuck,” he says, brushing his lips over her sweaty neck.  “So hot, Elisa.”  

Elisa lets out a sigh and leans into Patrick, letting him hold her weight.  He can feel her heart pounding wildly; his has finally started to slow.  “Bed?” Patrick asks.  Tiredness is setting in; it’s been a long day.

“Mmmm,” says Elisa.  “Sounds good.”

Patrick leaves his clothes where they are and flicks off the kitchen light; he can clean up tomorrow.  It’s infinitely more inviting to spend the rest of the evening curled up with Elisa.  He pulls her into bed, stealing soft kisses while she’ll let him.  “Love you,” Elisa keeps saying.  “Thank you.  So good.”  

“We should do that more often,” says Patrick, once his mind has calmed down enough that he feels articulate again.  “It wasn’t just me who thought that was really good, right?”

“Nope,” says Elisa.  “Not just you.”  It feels like she’s about to say something more, but the silence stretches on long enough that Patrick thinks he’s misinterpreted.  He’s about to open his mouth again when Elisa says, “Did you ever go down on Pete?”

“Did I—what?” says Patrick, glad they never bothered with a light so she can’t see the flush in his cheeks.  “I—yes.  I did.”  

“Mm,” says Elisa again.  “What about him?”

“Um.  Yeah.  We were together for awhile,” Patrick says.  “We did…we did a lot of things.  Why?”

“Just trying to get a feel for him, I guess,” says Elisa.  “I thought I should probably ask you?  Though I guess he’d answer too, probably…”  Patrick imagines that conversation and feels a wave of relief that Elisa had come to him instead.  “He seems like he’d be really intense in bed I guess.”  

“Yeah,” says Patrick, flipping through all his memories of Pete, “pretty much.”

Elisa hmms again and Patrick runs a hand down her side.  “What are you thinking?  Am I not enough man for you anymore?”  He grins at Elisa through the dimness, and she sticks her tongue out in reply.

“I’m not the one making out with strange men in the kitchen,” she shoots back.

“He’s not strange to me,” says Patrick.  

“You still kissed him,” she says.  She makes a good point.  

“Fine,” say Patrick.  “Permission to make out with strange men in my house granted.  Happy now?”

“Well,” says Elisa, “I guess that depends on if there are any strange men in your house who want to make out with me.”

Even if Patrick had an idea what Pete was thinking, he wouldn’t feel right sharing that information.  “I don’t know that there are any of these men who want to make out with me,” he admits.  “Like I said, Pete and I didn’t talk—“

“Babe,” says Elisa, “While we were both at work today he went out shopping and then made us dinner.  With _wine_.  I don’t pull that shit for people I don’t want to make out with.”

Elisa has a good point—even between the two of them, they rarely take time to do nice dinners that aren’t from restaurants.  

“Fine,” says Patrick.  “But he made it for you, too.  Right?”

“I don’t know,” says Elisa.  “Is he always this difficult to figure out?”

Patrick twines their fingers together.  “He is until he isn’t,” he says.  “But we can figure it out together?”

 

+

 

Patrick hardly talks to Pete the rest of the week between long days in the studio and Elisa over every night.  More and more of her clothes are finding the way into his laundry, so Patrick takes a stack of things he hardly wears anymore out of his dresser and shoves them in the guest room for the time being.  At least this way there aren’t random articles of clothing all over the house.  Elisa, when she notices, kisses him fiercely and practically pushes him onto the bed.  

The first time Patrick’s lap vibrates he ignores it; the second and third times come in quick succession and Patrick huffs in discontent.  “Who keeps texting you when you’re trying to get into my pants?” he asks, trying to work her phone out of her pocket.

Elisa swats his hand away and grabs the phone herself, switching it to silent before placing it on the bedside table.  “No one,” she says.  “Nothing important.”  Patrick believes her, but later he notices a string of notifications on her phone and feels a bit of guilt—apparently, someone really needs to talk.  Elisa doesn’t mention it again but Patrick’s more careful the next time her phone goes off.  He’s been that person in the past, whenever Pete needed him.  He doesn’t think he’d like Elisa quite so much if she didn’t do the same for her friends.  The fact that every buzz of her phone makes him think of Pete may not be fair to her, but some things are so deeply ingrained in him by this point that the usual standards of fairness don’t seem to apply.  Besides, it feels like ages since the three of them have actually hung out.

“I miss Pete,” says Patrick, leaning against Elisa the next time she sets her phone aside.  “We should see him again?”

“Sure,” says Elisa, “what were you thinking?  I might go out with some of the girls from work on Saturday.”  

“Okay, so not then,” says Patrick.  “Sunday?  I feel like there’s something going on Sunday.”  

“Your cousin’s birthday?” asks Elisa.

“Shit, right,” says Patrick.  “I mean, she wouldn’t mind if Pete were there…”  Elisa nudges him in the side.  “But I probably shouldn’t invite him,” says Patrick.  “What about next weekend?  Do we have plans for Friday?”

“I—I don’t know,” says Elisa.  “That’s kind of far off?  Like, something might come up.”  

Patrick makes a noise of frustration.  “We’ll find time,” says Elisa.  “Maybe you can do coffee or something?”

It’s doubtful that Pete will want to get up that early, but Patrick taps out, _Miss you, we should do something soon?_ and sends it off before he has time to re-think it.  Pete’s response lights up his screen almost instantly, _yes when_.

 _Not sure—I’m still in the studio and we’re tied up all weekend :(_ Patrick sends back.  _It just feels like we haven’t talked lately._

_we’ll think of something do u still leave early fr work?_

_Unfortunately, yes._ Patrick responds.  _Late nights, too._

 _i have an idea_ , Pete responds, but he refuses to tell Patrick what it is.

Patrick finds out soon enough because when he walks out the door the next morning, Pete’s standing there with two Starbucks cups in his hand.  “Hey!” Patrick exclaims, taking his coffee from Pete and then hugging him so enthusiastically he nearly spills it.  “Shit, I didn’t mean to make you get up early just so you could bring me coffee.”

Pete shrugs.  “I can think of worse reasons to wake up,” he says.  “C’mon, let’s get you to work.”

Patrick doesn’t quite understand what Pete means until Pete climbs into the passenger seat of his car and claims one of the cupholders.  “You put yours on the roof,” he stage whispers when Patrick reaches out for his drink and finds it not there; Patrick tries very hard to ignore Pete’s laughter because it’s early and he got free caffeine.  That doesn’t keep him from glaring at Pete just a little bit, though.

“What about your car?” he asks, as he pulls out onto the street.  “I can’t strand you at the studio all day.”

“I just caught a cab this morning,” says Pete.  “See, planning.”

“At least let me drop you off a few blocks from the studio,” Patrick says to him.  “Cabs don’t really come to us much.”  Pete shakes his head.  “Dude.”  Patrick reaches over to rest his hand on Pete’s for a minute.  “I’m really glad you came to see me, okay?  I’m not gonna leave you somewhere you can’t get out of.”

“Dude,” says Pete, “some of us saved the numbers of certain cab companies in our phones.”  It’s pretty clear he’s not going to give up so Patrick drops it and asks Pete how he’s been.

The drive to work seems considerably shorter than normal even though they still run into the same amount of traffic.  Patrick’s coffee goes mostly cold because he’s too busy talking to Pete to drink it.  It’s not a bad trade.  He grabs it anyway once he’s parked; he can warm it up inside.

“So,” says Pete.  “Have a good day.”

“Wanna come in?” asks Patrick.  He’s not ready for Pete to leave yet, and he could show Pete what he’s been working on even if it isn’t technically _his_.  

“Nah,” says Pete.  “I’d just be a distraction.”  He scuffs his feet against the pavement.  “It was good to see you.”

“Yeah,” says Patrick.  “You too.”  He hugs Pete once more before making himself go inside.  He looks back as he reaches the door; Pete’s still there watching, and when he waves, Patrick can’t help the way his heart skips. 

 

+

 

It could be the extra caffeine or it could be that today is just an unnaturally lucky day, but time doesn’t seem to escape them as it usually does.  Patrick doesn’t get out any more than fifteen minutes earlier than his usual, but it’s with the knowledge that their day was exceedingly productive.  If they keep up this pace, they’ll have time to go back and play around with a couple of quick decisions made earlier in the week.  

Their progress puts Patrick in a good mood instead of his usual Friday exhaustion.  When he gets home Elisa is waiting for him, sitting on his couch and surfing channels.

“Thank god,” she says, “There’s nothing good on and Pete won’t text me because he’s taking a shower.  How are you?”

“Good,” says Patrick.  “Awesome day today.”

“You miss Pete a bit less now?” she asks.  Clearly Pete’s been keeping in good contact, then.

Patrick shouldn’t miss Pete, because they just talked this morning, but it turns out that didn’t solve the problem.  “Think he’d come over if I ordered pizza?” he asks.  “We could do a movie night.  Unless you’re too tired.”  

“No, that sounds fun,” says Elisa.  “What are we watching?”

Patrick shrugs as he puts his phone to his ear and listens to it ring.  And ring.  And ring.

“I told you he was in the shower,” says Elisa, when Patrick hangs up on Pete’s voicemail.  “Movie?”

“Hm,” says Patrick, scanning his collection.  He’s not managed to narrow it down at all when he hears Elisa say, “hey, how do you feel about movie nights?” in the background.

Two minutes later, she tells Patrick that Pete’s on his way; two minutes after that, she tells Patrick that’s he’s ridiculous and they can watch _Pocahontas_ for all she cares.

“You hate _Pocahontas_ ,” Patrick says.

“Yes, but at least it’s a decision,” she points out.  

Patrick’s narrowed it down to five movies by the time Pete gets there, and only then because he can’t decide which action movie to keep in the running.  “Dude,” says Pete from right behind him, “just pick one.  Sci-fi?”

Patrick slips _Moon_ out of his DVD shelf and hands it to Pete.  “Good,” says Pete.  “Now, I was promised pizza?”

“It’s on it’s way,” says Patrick, looking at Elisa to see if she’s made the call yet.  She shakes her head.  “Uh, as soon as we order it?”

“Useless,” Pete teases, pulling his phone out.  “I got this.  Go ruminate for another twenty minutes about what you want us to drink—I think this movie calls for a dry white wine—"

Patrick smacks him in the arm.  “Asshole.”

Pete just grins at him and shoves him off toward Elisa.  

Eventually they get set up—the movie in, the lights dimmed, food and drinks on the table in front of them.  “Oh shit,” says Patrick, as he’s about to sit down.  “Plates.  And napkins?  Be right back.”  

While he’s gone, Elisa claims the middle of the couch and Pete claims the biggest slice of pizza.  Patrick hates them both.  

The night is a perfect way to unwind after a long week, even when Elisa and Pete get into an argument about the ethics of space colonization after the credits roll.  Patrick leans into Elisa as she articulates her position, watching Pete’s reactions flicker across his face.  Only when he fails to stifle his yawn does Pete cut them off.  “I think we’d better let Patrick get to bed,” he says.  

“It’s fine,” says Patrick, yawning again.  “I can deal.”  He stretches and pushes up from the couch, picking up his plate and reaching for Pete’s.

“Hey, we got it,” says Pete.  “Go get ready for bed.”  

Patrick washes his face and brushes his teeth and changes into his pajamas; when he goes out to say goodnight, the table has been cleared and Pete and Elisa have relocated their argument to the vicinity of the kitchen sink.

“I’m gonna head to bed,” he says, touching the small of Elisa’s back.  “You two enjoy yourselves.  No, really,” he says, when he sees that Pete is about to protest.  “I’d stay up, but I’m too tired.”  

“Night, babe,” says Elisa, giving Patrick a quick peck.  “Sleep well.”

Pete hugs him tight, kisses his forehead.  “Get some sleep.”

“You too,” says Patrick.  “You were up early this morning.”  

“I will,” Pete promises.  “G’night.”

Patrick drops off before Elisa joins him and wakes up before her the next morning.  Him being out of bed before Elisa is rare, but Patrick’s parched and he may be a bit paranoid, but it sounds like there’s someone else in his house.

When Patrick walks out to the kitchen he sees Pete putting his coat on.

“Oh, hey,” says Pete.  “Sorry if I woke you.  I just—Elisa and I were up half the night so she told me I should crash here.”

“That’s fine,” says Patrick.  “You don’t have to leave—we could do breakfast.”

Pete shakes his head.  “I can’t,” he says.  “Got a meeting in an hour and a half.  Thanks, though.”

Patrick smiles weakly and wonders if, after all this time, he’s being let down easy.  “It can’t take that long to get there,” he says.

“Nope,” Pete admits.  “But if I agree to stay, I won’t leave in time.”  

Patrick feels a rush of pleasure at the fact that Pete isn’t ditching them.  “Can I at least make you some coffee?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Pete shrugs out of his coat.  “Sure.”  He doesn’t say much else while the coffee’s brewing, too aware of how much Patrick hates having to string words together before his morning caffeine.  Once Patrick’s poured them some and directed Pete toward the sugar and the creamer, Pete leans against the counter across from him and asks, “So how’s work coming?”

“Great,” says Patrick, excited all over again when he remembers the previous day’s progress; “It’s coming along so well,” and he takes the time to tell Pete about the album because Pete will understand everything he’s talking about.  He doesn’t miss the way Pete stares at him over their mugs.  He doesn’t think Pete wants him to miss it.  “So what about you?” he asks, when he wraps up.  “How’s your life?”

“I just told you about my life yesterday,” Pete says.  “What about yours?  Elisa says you’re writing an album.”

Patrick shrugs.  “I’m writing stuff, I guess,” he says.  “I always am.”

“And you’re recording a demo?”

“I guess,” says Patrick, shame creeping through him at the thought of Pete listening to it.  “I’ve gotten a few songs.  They’re not quite what I—"

“I bet they’re amazing,” Pete interrupts.  Patrick flushes.  “Just, you know,” says Pete.  “You always are.”  

“Nah,” says Patrick.  “They’re okay, I guess.”  

“One day you’ll let me hear them and then I’ll be able to tell you for certain that you’re wrong,” says Pete.  “But for now you’re just gonna have to take my word for it.  You got any studio time planned soon?”

Patrick shrugs; he’s been hesitant to book another session because what little writing time he gets has been so filled with uncertainty lately.  “Maybe soon.  Just working some stuff out first, I guess.”

“Right,” says Pete, “well, let me know when you go back, yeah?  We’ll have to celebrate.”  

Rather than respond, Patrick drains his mug and places it in the sink; when he turns back around, Pete is right there.  

“Thanks for the coffee,” he says, handing his mug over.  “I’d better go.”  

“All right.”  Patrick carefully rinses both mugs before placing them in the dishwasher.  “Thanks for coming over last night.  I hope we didn’t interrupt anything.”  

“As if,” says Pete.  “Thanks for having me.”  He smooths back Patrick’s hair and trails his hand down Patrick’s face.  “Is this okay?”

“Yes,” says Patrick, “ _please_.”  

Pete kisses him hungrily, nothing like his cautious reticence of their past few meetings.  Patrick gasps into his mouth and pulls him closer, wondering how important Pete’s meeting is, how hard it would be for him to reschedule—

He tightens his grip on Pete’s arm when Pete pulls back.

“I have to go,” Pete says.  “I.  We’re not supposed to do it like this.”

“Like what?” asks Patrick.  “We can’t do worse than last time.  Can’t you just…”

“Please,” says Pete.  “I want to.  But I’m not going to.  Okay?”  

Patrick lets go of him.  “Okay.”  

“Okay,” Pete repeats.  “I’ll see you again soon?”

Patrick shrugs.  “I’m still in the studio.”

“I know,” says Pete.  “But we made it work.  We can do it again.”  His smile is genuine enough that Patrick has to believe it.

“I just feel like every time you leave I don’t know when you’ll be back,” Patrick admits.  

Pete pauses in pulling on his coat.  “What if we made plans?  I could…I could come see you again Tuesday morning?”

It’s not nearly as much as Patrick wants, but it’ll have to do.  “Okay,” he says.  “Then I’ll see you Tuesday.”

Pete gives him a wave as he lets himself out.  “Say bye to Elisa for me,” he says, and then he shuts the door.

Suddenly alone, Patrick considers going back to bed, but he’s ruined for it now.  Instead he pulls out his laptop and does a bit of work, piecing together words and melodies so they match what he hears in his head.  When Elisa wakes up and finds him at it she pours herself a bowl of cereal and settles next to him on the couch.  “No, do your work,” she says, when he tries to put his laptop away.  “It’s good to see you at it again.”

Patrick ends up passing most of his weekend that way, and too soon he’s back to working with other people’s songs.  At least this time he has a meeting with Pete to look forward to; by the time he gets home extra late after a Monday where everything possible had gone wrong, he needs the pick-me-up more than he’d imagined.  The thrill of anticipation more than outdoes the thrill he’d gotten last time from the surprise of it all; or maybe it’s just the smile on Pete’s face when Patrick sees him that makes it worth it.  Pete doesn’t stop smiling the whole ride, even when he admits to Patrick that last time he’d had to wait fifteen minutes for a cab.  “But I thought ahead this time,” he says; “I called last night and arranged for them to pick me up.  So you don’t have to worry.”

Patrick had actually been about to tell Pete that it sounded like too much effort to put in for such little time, but he keeps that inside too.

It turns out that the ride in with Pete is the best part of the day; things picked up about as they’d left off the night previous, and Patrick is about to snap by the time they call a break.  He storms outside and whips his phone out, not even caring that just fifteen minutes ago he’d yelled at someone else for doing the same.

“Hey,” he says, when Elisa answers on the second ring.  

“Are you okay?” Elisa asks.  “What’s going on.”

“Rough day,” says Patrick.  “Talk to me for five minutes?”

Elisa tells him about her morning and gives him a rundown on how everyone else in the office is doing and then helpfully informs him when it’s been five minutes.  “Thanks,” says Patrick with a sigh; at least he’s no longer fighting urges to punch something.  “I guess I should get back to it.  Love you.”

Her call gives him the fortitude to walk back inside to an afternoon that doesn’t go smoother, per se, but nothing ends in a shouting match.  Patrick calls it a win as he walks out to his car that night.  There’s no way they can get through a whole week of this, and Patrick has an inspiring speech all planned out by the time he gets home, but he never has to use it.  Things snap back into place midway through the next morning and they barely break all day.  When Patrick heads home, he’s tired, but happy.  

“Better day today?” Elisa asks, noting Patrick’s almost-smile when he walks through the door.

“So much,” says Patrick.  “And yours?”

“Pretty good,” Elisa says with a shrug, and then turns back to her phone; Patrick leaves her to it.  He’s getting tired of having early mornings and late nights, but that’s what his job is—and at least now Elisa’s practically living with him, so he’s guaranteed to see her at least once a day.  He still wishes he got to see her more.

“Do we have plans for Friday?” he asks her.  Friday used to be date night for the two of them but lately that tradition’s been shaken.  He would be okay with resurrecting it.

“Hm?” says Elisa, “Friday?  Why?  Maybe we should just play it by ear, with your work being what it is right now.”

“I guess,” says Patrick.  “It just seems like a long time since we’ve gone out, you know.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure we can find something to do if you still feel like it then,” says Elisa.

Patrick can’t help the feeling that he’s letting her down by spending so much time at work, but she doesn’t seem upset that evening, or the next, or even early Friday morning when she wakes up with Patrick’s alarm.

“Sorry,” he whispers.  “Go back to sleep.”

“I wasn’t really asleep anyhow,” she says.  “Don’t worry about it.”

When Patrick gets out of the shower, he finds Elisa rifling through his closet.  “How come you never wear this shirt anymore?” she asks, holding out a nice button-down that Patrick thinks he’s hardly worn around her at all.

“What, to the studio?”  Patrick usually dresses for comfort, not style.

“It looks good on you,” says Elisa.  “I guess you don’t have to.”  

Patrick takes her word for it and slips the shirt on along with a nice pair of slacks, though he forgoes the tie.  “I feel ridiculous,” he says; if anyone asks, he’ll have to tell them it’s date night and hope they don’t ask for any details.   

“You look hot,” says Elisa.  “You’re welcome.”  

Patrick rolls his eyes and makes her wear his favorite purple shirt in revenge; he feels Elisa’s getting the better end of the bargain still, but he’s willing to call it even.

When he steps out the door he finds Pete waiting, with two cups of coffee and a nervous look on his face.

“Hey,” says Patrick, smiling, “Didn’t know I got to see you today.”  

Pete doesn’t say anything until they’re mid-hug.  “Can I—borrow you car for the day?”  he asks.  “Mine had to go to the shop and—“ his words tumble out in a rush.

“Sure,” says Patrick.  “As long as you have it back by the time I get off work tonight.”

“Yeah,” says Pete.  “I figured I could be back by six-thirty?”

It’s a rare day when Patrick leaves the studio before then, and the way this album has gone, he knows better than to hope.  “That’ll be fine,” he says.  “You can just drop of my keys so you don’t have to wait.”

For once, Pete doesn’t talk much during the drive, but when Patrick pulls into the parking lot and shifts into neutral, Pete catches his wrist.  “Wait,” he says, and pulls Patrick toward him for a quick kiss.  “See you later.”

Patrick feels like what he’s been doing is written all over his face when he walks into the studio, but if anyone else notices, they don’t comment on it.  Throughout the day Patrick keeps catching himself wondering if Pete’s uncharacteristic silence is a sign of bad things to come.  The fact that they wrap for the night at 6:22 doesn’t calm him; it could be a cushion to shield him from what’s to come.

“Awesome, guys,” says Patrick anyway as he powers everything down for the night.  “Have a good weekend.”

He guarantees himself a few more minutes of happiness by leaving his phone where it is while he walks out, but it turns out it doesn’t matter: Pete and Elisa are both outside, waiting for him.  “Hey, what,” says Patrick, doing a double-take at the dress Elisa is wearing.  It’s definitely not what she’d had on in the morning.  “Hi.  Wow.”  He’s almost too busy staring at Elisa to notice Pete, and though Patrick had spent a lot of their younger days making fun of him for wearing all black, he has to admit that it looks good on Pete tonight.  “Wow.  What’s going on?”

“We,” says Pete, “are going out to dinner.”  He pauses.  “If you want to.”  

Patrick looks at Elisa.  “You knew about this?”  

She gives a casual shrug and though she’s a better actor than Pete, she’s not good enough to fool him.  “You did,” he says, putting the pieces together.  He turns to Pete.  “And _you_ didn’t actually need my car this morning.”  

“Mine is in the shop,” Pete offers.  “I took it there so they could, uh, change the oil and tell me if there was anything wrong with it?”

Patrick can’t hold back the laugh at that one.  “Oh my god,” he said.  “You totally did that to try to make yourself a better liar, didn’t you.”

“It was actually my idea,” Elisa chimes in.  “It worked, didn’t it?  Oh, hey, here’s your tie.”  She pulls it out of her purse and hands it over

“Yeah,” says Patrick, eventually giving up the struggle with his tie and letting Elisa fix it up for him.  “Yes.  I just…I can’t believe you two…”

“Are totally awesome in every single way?” Elisa asks.  Patrick shrugs, gives a nod.  It’s as close as he’s going to get to describing the feeling in his chest.  

“So if you’re done being surprised now we should get going?” says Pete.  “We have a 7:15 reservation.”  

“Optimistic,” notes Patrick.  He grabs Pete’s hand and squeezes it briefly, still incapable of articulating any of the things that really matter.

Pete shrugs.  “I figured you would make it.”  He unlocks Patrick’s car and tosses the keys to Elisa.  

“Are either you going to tell me where we’re headed?” asks Patrick, “or does that get to be a surprise, too?”

Elisa pretends to think about it for a moment, exchanging a conspiratorial glance with Pete in the rearview mirror.  “You’ll find it soon enough.”  Patrick doesn’t think arguing will convince her to spill even though he personally feels like enough of today has been hidden from him.  Patrick’s always the one who plans out the details, who takes pieces and makes them fit so Pete’s crazy schemes fall into place.  He’s not used to being the one left in the dark.  Pete and Elisa should know that by now.  He’s sure that they do.

“Don’t worry,” says Pete, leaning forward to rest his head on the back of Patrick’s seat and grinning at him.  “It’s gonna be great.”  

Patrick takes a deep breath, sits back, and lets himself believe.   

 

~


End file.
